PERCEPTIONS OF FEMALE drinking were a key component of the drink crisis. During the war it was believed that an increased number of women were drinking larger amounts of alcohol than ever before. Stories of women drinking, sometimes to excess, were acute reminders that improvements to national efficiency were still required if victory was to be won. These stories served to confirm underlying fears about the sanctity of the female's place in Edwardian society. Female intoxication was neither moral nor appropriate and threatened the established social order at a time when national efficiency was paramount. Contemporary evidence differs with regard to the scale of the problem, making it difficult for the historian to come to definite conclusions. Indeed, much evidence is simply contradictory. What is known for certain, though, is that action taken to remedy female drinking became emblematic of the broader desire to regulate certain sections of society to benefit the war effort. The intricacies of this debate, and the selective use of evidence, illustrates the shaky ground on which so much drink policy was founded during the war.

Female intoxication was a powerful symptom of the drink crisis engulfing Britain. During the Edwardian period women were still defined in terms of their relationship towards men. Women's prime role in life was mother-hood but gender roles were compromised by the necessity of female labour entering the workforce during a time of war. Women, whether married or single, found themselves working in factories throughout Britain. Women remained, though, the domestic hub of Edwardian family life, central to the existence of the family unit and thus of Edwardian society. Any movement outside of this domestic sphere encountered suspicion and was perceived as a threat to national efficiency. Thus it was with despair that many moral commentators became conscious of women drinking in Britain during the war.

As early as 1900 concern was increasing over female intemperance due to the protestations of disparate groups of temperance workers, eugenicists, social reformers, imperialists and the medical profession. Women had always drunk in the pubs of Britain forming, between 25–30 per cent of pub customers prior to the war, but in the context of war this drinking was interpreted as definite evidence of the disintegration of the family, which would lead to defeat in war and the moral collapse of the nation.