Let's hear it for the ladies

‘Do you actually like whisky then?’ ‘This can’t be your real job.’ ‘Let me buy you a vodka and coke instead,’ are just a handful of phrases I, and many other women working in the whisky industry, encounter daily.

Granted the thoughtless misogynistic comments are spouted by the minority but still, with more women than ever enjoying a wee dram why does gender stereotyping still exist at all?

According to a 2012 Simons Market Report, 30% of whisky drinkers are female, while some of the most talented master blenders in the Scotch whisky industry are women – Maureen Robinson at Diageo, Rachel Barrie at Morrison Bowmore and Kirsty McCallum at Burn Stewart (who is now in an ambassadorial role) to name a few. Heck, one of the largest Scotch whisky-producing companies is led by a female CEO.

Indeed, women have been distilling Scotch since the 19th century when it was commonplace for farmhouses to operate a still – illicit or otherwise – for domestic consumption. Some distilleries would not be here today if it weren’t for the pioneering resilience of female distillers like Elizabeth Cumming (Cardow, now Cardhu) and Bessie Williamson (Laphroaig). As Fred Minnick says in his book Whiskey Women: The Untold story of how Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch and Irish Whiskey: ‘For a business steeped in tradition and history, whiskey has forgotten its better half. Women have always been a part of whiskey history; they’ve just never received credit.’

Women working in the Chivas Brothers bottling hall in the 19th century

Even now women are referencing whisky in popular culture more than ever. Christina Hendricks may have kick-started the renaissance through her tough, whisky-swigging character in Mad Men, but you needn’t look much further to find female whisky drinkers in film, music and art: Rihanna, The Staves, Mila Kunis, Lady Gaga, Aisha Tyler... the list goes on.

Stardom aside, taking in The Whisky Exchange Whisky Show in London this week also dispelled the myth that Scotch is exclusively a man’s drink – ladies poured in to try a dram with as much passion and interest as their male counterparts.

So next time you see a lady drinking a dram at a bar, working at a whisky exhibition or even making whisky in a distillery, she doesn’t need saving with a vodka and coke. Instead she needs thanking for her contribution to the industry. 

Women's contribution to the whisky industry is even making national news in America: