Alcohol consumption can result in many negative consequences both physiological and social, ranging from health consequences such as liver cirrhosis to social consequences such as conflict with friends or family and job loss. However, the kinds of negative consequences experienced may depend on both gender and culture (1). Assessing gender differences is important first to identify how alcohol affects the lives of men and women differently, and secondly because screening and diagnostic instruments developed from composite measures of problem consequences may risk gender bias if they include behaviors that are more likely to be engaged in by one gender than the other regardless of their drinking patterns. For example, because men are generally more likely than women to drive a motor vehicle (2–4), inclusion of drinking-driving in a composite measure would result in more men than women identified as meeting the DSM IV alcohol abuse criteria even if men and women had comparable drinking patterns.
