Women in college are more likely to binge drink than men according to a new study of Spanish university students published by the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
The study from researchers at the University of Vigo showed female students got drunk faster than male students. Even though men tended to drink more overall, because the women in the study tended to have a more sedentary lifestyle and consumed alcohol more quickly, they got more intoxicated.
"The amount drunk per unit of time is higher among women,” said José Cancela Carral, co-author of the study. “In other words, even though male students drink more often, females do so more intensively in shorter periods of time, which is known as binge drinking.”
Fifty-six percent of female students were considered binge drinkers in the study, compared to 41 percent of their male counterparts, the Star-Ledger reports.
Other recent studies have found binge drinking has steadily increased for American women in college. One study from the Washington University School of Medicine found "the ‘gender gap’ between male and female drinkers has been closing," and rates of binge drinking among women rose over the last 30 years. A 2012 Rutgers University study found that of women who "had never drunk heavily in high school (if at all), nearly half admitted to binge drinking at least once by the end of their first college semester."