Women worldwide are drinking more, and the alcohol industry is doing what it can to encourage the trend, the Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 15.

British "ladettes" have gained an international reputation for heavy drinking (and brawling), but the rise in alcohol consumption among women has become a global phenomenon. Young women in the U.K. and U.S. drank a third more alcohol by volume in 2004 than they did five years prior, researchers said.

The trend has demographic, economic, and cultural aspects, but part of the story is that the alcohol industry is pushing a variety of new products aimed especially at women, including vodka- and liqueur-based drinks. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, is about to unveil a new line of feminine, carbonated fruit drinks under the brand name Peels, while Diageo and other liquor makers have been advertising heavily on cable programs aimed at 18- to 24-year-old women. 

In the U.K., there are no less than 81 premixed bottled drinks on store shelves that appeal primarily to women, including a diet version of Bacardi Breezers. Global sales of such "alcopops" topped $22.7 billion last year.

Along with the rise in consumption has come a rise in female violence. "In the traditional pub fight in the past, [women] would have been holding their partners back," said Chris Allison, head of licensing for Great Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers. "Now they are mirroring the behavior of males."

Heavier drinking among women has raised concerns about higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases, brain damage, cancer, and heart problems. The American Medical Association charges that alcopops are a way for the alcohol industry to entice teen and young drinkers into drinking harder liquor down the road. The strategy mirrors that of the tobacco industry, which succeeded in increasing the number of women smokers by offering "smooth" and "thin" cigarettes starting in the Sixties and Seventies.