Did women suffer from alcoholism as much as men in 19th century America?
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Before Prohibition, in the USA public social drinking tended to be carried out in saloons. These were places where it was not socially acceptable for women to be. Thus the only women you would generally find in a saloon were...non-socially acceptable women. Entertainers, prostitutes, etc.
As a result, alcoholism was viewed as an almost entirely male behavior. Where it impacted with women was when their men spent all of their time and/or money in saloons rather than taking care of the family, and when they came home drunk. I'm not saying this was necessarily the reality, but this was the vision of the situation pushed by the Anti-Saloon league and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Because of this, women were viewed as a reliable voting block for prohibitionists, which is why the ASL and its allies pushed women's suffrage in the states, and also pushed for (and eventually got) the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote nationwide. We like to think that men suddenly became enlightened or something, but the honest truth is that crass alcohol politics played a vital part in the achievement of women's suffrage in the USA.
Ironically, with the passage of prohibition, saloons were essentially outlawed, and were replaced with speakeasies, where women were every bit as socially accepted as men. So one of the unintended consequences of prohibition was the general spread of social alcohol consumption (and thus alcoholism) to women.
All of this is covered in wonderful detail in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. If you are interested in this subject, I can't recommend that book highly enough.
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This is a case where the more you think about the reliability of the statistics, the less you trust them. It was socially acceptable for men to drink in public. It was not socially acceptable for women to visit saloons and it appears that female alcoholism and drunkenness were taboo. So drinking, if it did go on, would be at home while the men were out. Maybe alone or in female company. Men would not admit to their wives' drinking. Virtually everyone involved in areas that took an interest in drinking, such as doctors, politicians, journalists were male. They might not be interested in women's problems, or it might seem inappropriate to talk about it. What we know about history generally is the men's view and so I would say the statistics on this are about as good as the statistics on perfect murders.
We have seen from sex-abuse scandals all over the world that if people choose to keep quiet about something then the statistics can be virtually 100% wrong and that this is particularly likely when women are the victims.
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