“It’s off-putting to see ladies drinking a pint” –
Women have suffered widespread discrimination and oppression within brewing and drinking culture. There is still a long way to go but there are many examples of women taking the lead in the fight for equality and representation in the brewhouse, at the bar and within CAMRA. ’50 years of CAMRA’ author Laura Hadland leads us on a journey through the history of women, CAMRA and British drinking culture.
A food and drink writer, photographer, competition judge & CAMRA member. Laura’s blogs at Extreme Housewifery and is the author of '50 years of CAMRA’. She runs a creative agency for SME’s called Thirst Media.
Women and beer have a long and venerable association in the UK. There is a rich history of passionate, knowledgeable and fearless beer-loving women both within CAMRA and outside of it. They have made their own mark on the world of cask conditioned ale, improving things for everyone. However, there is unfortunately a parallel tradition of the narratives of discrimination, spewing their prudish moralising against women who make or drink beer.
It may come as a surprise that in the modern organisation women are still quite poorly represented. Only 20% of CAMRA members are women and an even smaller fraction are Regional Directors—just two in sixteen. However, at the highest level representation is slightly better, with women making up a third of the current National Executive.
Some pioneering women have had such an impact on the way we drink live beer that today we can almost take it for granted, although there is a continuing need for constant vigilance against misogyny and sexism.
Thousands of years ago beer was born in ancient Mesopotamia. Brewing was an extreme rarity in being an acceptable female occupation. Supplication was made to a goddess, not a god, for the protection and success of the industry.
Later, the same rules applied to our own early brewing roots. In the medieval period, brewsters sold home brewed ale to supplement their household income. They were gradually forced to give way to a more aggressive commercialisation of the product by male-led ale houses.
Women have not held a majority in the British beer industry since that time. However there is still a fine lineage of female brewers and brewery workers that can be traced through the centuries. This includes Hester Parnall, the chairman of St Austell from 1911 to 1939. The brewery has placed great emphasis on the crucial role she played in the business:
“That the Brewery thrived and grew during the interwar years is testament to her rugged determination and hands-on approach to the running of the company and the estate was in great shape when the Chairmanship passed on to Egbert Barnes in 1939, on the eve of World War Two.”
There is a fantastic gallery of women in pubs and breweries through the years available on the Boak and Bailey blog, which is a treasure trove of historical sources and fantastic analysis of beery history. The mantle of Hester Parnall and her contemporaries has been taken up in the modern age by brewers like Sara Barton of Brewsters and Jaega Wise at Wild Card.
One of CAMRA’s early victories in the 1970s was forcing the hand of brewers to make the details of their beer’s alcoholic strength public. They believed it was in the consumer interest to know how strong a beer was so that the customer could make informed choices about what they drank, and also to prevent brewers from seeking to increase their profit margins by reducing the alcoholic content of their products, thus reducing the tax burden placed on them.
The CAMRA faithful would fill small vials with beer from the pub and pass them on for analysis in a lab to discover the alcoholic strength. By publishing the results of these tests they eventually made the breweries accountable, as well as piquing the interest of trading standards who began to investigate the issue.
One of the key people undertaking these analyses was Janet Pigeon, along with her husband, Chris. Janet worked in the lab at Guinness and was putting her job at risk to do the work. She tested hundreds of beers and the results were published in the Good Beer Guide for three years from 1977. Chris said, ‘the best thing we ever did was to reveal the duplicity of the brewers over beer strength. Some of them even used to cut the strength in summer and put it back up in winter.’
Sadly, Janet, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, passed away at the age of just 54 in the year 2000, but her contribution to CAMRA is still much celebrated. Breweries were outraged by the exposure of their trade secrets at first. But gradually the practice of announcing a beer’s strength on the label or pump clip crept into vogue even before it became a legal requirement. Breweries that were more inclined towards transparency in this way helped to push up quality more generally for the consumer.
Janet Pigeon is not the only female scientist that has made an impact on CAMRA. Catherine Tonry is the current Great British Beer Festival organiser as well as the CAMRA Technical Director, heading up the Technical Advisory Group (TAG). They decide on the working definitions that the Campaign adheres to including what counts as real ale, cider and perry. Catherine demonstrated her suitability for a place on the committee convincingly at her first TAG meeting by giving a brief talk on bubble dynamics in fluids. This was taken from one area of her professional research. However, she is the first to admit that women have not historically been a part of TAG:
“Rather embarrassingly I am currently the only female member of the group. I am not sure historically, but certainly when I joined and took over as chairman there weren’t any female members. This is something I hope to work on.”
Some commentators believe that pubs have actually changed physically in recent decades to accommodate the particular needs of their female customers.
‘The idea of financial, social and sexual segregation was an entrenched feature of pubs until well after the Second World War,’ writes outspoken cabbie commentator ‘Gibson Square’. In his blog he sets out a detailed analysis of the traditional use of etched and then frosted glass in pub windows to shield drinkers from the prying eyes of passers by. The subsequent disappearance of the historic etched glass panel in many pubs is arguably down to clear glass was simply a cheaper replacement, but Geoff Brandwood put forward his own analysis for an article in the Journal of the Brewery History Society of 2006:
“A standard argument for replacing etched glass by clear is that it is ‘women-friendly’: that is, they don’t feel they are entering a secret, threatening man’s space; the world of the pub therefore becomes transparent both physically and metaphorically. The consequence of all this is that many pubs have been denuded of fine Victorian and Edwardian glass and this has had a dramatic effect on their appearance.”
It is hard now to imagine our pubs as such rigidly divided spaces, particularly as the recent evidence shows that pubs play an important role in social cohesion and tackling loneliness. A small straw poll on Twitter undertaken during the research for this article suggested that around two thirds of women never feel intimidated when entering a pub, regardless of whether or not they are on their own. Veteran CAMRA member and organiser of the Kent Beer Festival for forty years Gill Keay thinks that if you are unselfconscious, and more to the point, drinking beer, then you will fit into most places.
However, there has been one definite change to the physical space of our pubs that has absolutely made women feel overtly more welcome. Gill remembers “bursting into tears outside the pavilion at Lords when all my male companions went inside, leaving me on my own. Now I’m allowed in.” The Gentleman’s Bar died a death after the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act (1975). However, plenty had existed around the country, as the GENTS ONLY sign on the door of a room in the Grade II Listed Loggerheads in Shrewsbury attests.
The disappearance of the Gents Only bar was a physical manifestation of the victories won by women fighting for their right to use the pub in the same way as anyone else. When CAMRA came into being in 1971, women had already begun to make a stand over widely accepted social norms. They were not always immediately successful. The Fleet Street bar El Vino traditionally banished its female customers to a back room. This was nominally to uphold “old fashioned ideas of chivalry” according to the bar’s press statements. In reality the practice is thought to have originated in the forties to prevent prostitutes from picking up customers.
A group of female journalists stormed the bar in 1970 saying “our money is equal so our rights must be equal.” They were summarily sent back out with their male Fleet Street colleagues mocking the ‘storm in a sherry glass.’
There was a similar pitched battle at The Grill pub in Union Street, Aberdeen on 19 April 1973. A delegate at the Scottish Trade Union Congress annual conference pointed out the pub over the road during a debate about the Sex Discrimination Bill. It had a ban on women entering or being served, despite employing female staff. This led to a protest in the pub with the landlord forcibly trying to prevent them entering and the ‘No Ladies Please’ sign being removed from the window. The trade union women demanded to be allowed to finish their drinks before being ejected from the premises by police. The incident was made into a short film that won an award of merit from the US Best Shorts Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2019.
It wasn’t until November 1982, a decade later, that El Vino on Fleet Street was brought kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. Solicitor Tess Gill and journalist Anna Coote won a legal case against the bar. The judge ruled that as it was a known haunt for journalists, with women reporters confined to tables at the back where they were prevented from having the same professional access to “the gossip of the day” as the male hacks that drank there. It was one of the first decisive pieces of case law that demonstrated the efficacy of the Sex Discrimination Act. Tess and Anna’s victory meant that it was no longer legal to refuse to serve people on the basis of gender.
Perhaps the most famous case of a CAMRA member asserting her rights is that of Sara Hicks. She was refused a pint at Ye Olde Cider Bar in Newton Abbot, Devon in February 1993. The landlord, Richard Knibbs, had always steadfastly refused to serve pints to women during his 22 years behind the bar despite this being technically against the law.
What’s Brewing reported that he believed ‘women cannot handle pints of strong cider.’ He was unrepentant about his actions, saying ‘it’s off-putting to see ladies drinking a pint’. Sara threatened legal action and Knibbs was forced to withdraw his ban as well as paying £500 towards Sara’s legal costs in an out of court settlement.
Writing in the 2001 Good Beer Guide, renowned beer columnist Lynne Pearce reflected wearily on the ongoing battle to have women recognised as legitimate customers, asking ‘should we take up rugby to get noticed by the brewers?’ However, she had discovered some progress, identifying Wetherspoons, who had first been called Good Beer Guide’s Pub Chain of the Year in 1993, as being particularly strong in representing women in their advertisements, where companies like Fullers were noticeably still not. This was the year that Wetherspoons were the fastest growing company in the UK, opening their 500th pub in that year. It is not unreasonable to think that their more inclusive approach contributed to this success by practically doubling their potential customer base.
About 1 in 5 adults in the UK do not drink alcohol at all, and according to research commissioned from YouGov by women and beer group Dea Latis in 2018, we have one of the lowest percentages of female beer drinkers in the world. Despite the presumably relatively low numbers of female drinkers in this country, women are increasingly well represented at beer festivals including owning breweries and/or brewing the beer on sale, being one of the many volunteers helping to put on the events, as well as making up a growing percentage of the attendees.
Christine Cryne was the first woman to hold the position of Great British Beer Festival Organiser in 1992. It was the first year the event was held in a central London location – Olympia Exhibition Centre. As beer drinkers became more knowledgeable, beer quality, and particularly beer temperature, was an increasing factor in considering what needed to be done to ensure CAMRA’s flagship event was worthy of that accolade. Christine was adamant that she would only take on the role of organiser if money was spent on addressing this. Working with Paul Moorhouse, CAMRA’s Technical Director at the time, various schemes and companies were spoken to. The result was the welcome appearance of coolers and barrel cooling jackets at the 1992 Festival. They continued to be used for many years thereafter, majorly due to Christine’s leadership. But they weren’t well liked by everybody. As the Festival grew, so did the number of jackets and cleaning them all was not the most popular job during take down!
Christine was the first in a line of female GBBF organisers. The position is currently held by Catherine Tonry who thinks that the work of Christine along with Paula Waters and Alison Bridle as event organisers has really laid the foundations and it is now pretty standard for women to take the lead in CAMRA as they prove their skill and expertise through delivering fantastically successful events. But it is not just the top job where women have played a part in running the GBBF. Female bar managers and stewards are today a common occurrence and that can be said at local beer festivals too.
“Today’s pubgoers are as likely to be female as male. Expectations include a smoke-free area, a choice of good food, a welcome for their children – and a decent pint to boot.”
Lynne Pearce, Good Beer Guide 2001
Lynne’s assessment of what women want in a pub still hits the mark today, more or less. In particular a food offering is considered to be especially important in some quarters. CAMRA master trainer Christine Cryne has noticed that she sees a greater uptake of women to her tasting sessions when beer is paired with food. Over recent years, CAMRA has increased the number of tastings they offer, including a number of online tastings run by people like Christine during the UK lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
Arguably no one did more to introduce beer and food pairings to the general public than the great Susan Novak. She is one of the true trailblazers of female beer writers and was the first woman to chair the British Guild of Beer Writers. She was given a fantastic platform by CAMRA to practice her craft. Not only have her recipes and beer matching columns graced the pages of What’s Brewing for over 30 years, but she has also produced a popular series of the Good Pub Food Guide for CAMRA, which was first published in 1989.
Beer and cider was able to break the monopoly that wine had over food matching, argues Jane Peyton the UK’s first accredited Pommelier. Offering food pairings has helped “to change people’s perception of beer, cider & perry who may not think they should be on the dining table,” Jane says. Co-founder of Little Pomona and author of The Cider Insider Susanna Forbes agrees:
“Food matching is a marvellous way into uncovering the building blocks of cider. And everyone can do it. Women, with their sensitive palates and familiarity with the tastes of ingredients can straight away notice where one flavour matches or contrasts with another. This provides another way into describing the cider and its properties.
“It’s a wonderful way to begin and then continue your journey. It’s accessible to all. That’s where part of my beer journey happened, and I’m also experienced in wine matching.”
However, not every woman is desperate for elaborate pairings when they enjoy their real beer or cider. The current CAMRA Real Ale, Cider and Perry Campaigns Director Gillian Hough says that she can see how food matching would introduce beer to a fresh market, but personally has never needed any encouragement to taste the complexity of beer. She would rather visit pubs and clubs to enjoy going out and meeting friends, eating “whatever we could find” rather than put on an elaborate beer themed dinner party.
As a female writer and beer lover myself I would venture to suggest that this variety of perspectives is indicative of a shift in attitudes. It is perhaps the simplest change – I can write about women in beer, and it is obvious to everyone reading it that there are no rules about what is acceptable to females or what they prefer. Women have never been a homogenous group any more than men have. And CAMRA is there to support them all, however they like to brew, serve or enjoy their cask conditioned beer, real cider or perry.
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