Remember when men drank pints and women had a 'lady's'?

Stars like Kim Kardashian, along with the Princess of Wales Kate Middleton - both of whom enjoy a pint of the black stuff - have helped to boost sales, which in recent years have seen a 24 per cent rise in female drinkers

When I was young, women didn’t drink beer - at least not in the pubs where I worked.

It was the late 1970s. I worked part-time in three different pubs in rural North Yorkshire and can’t remember one occasion when a woman ordered a bitter, let alone a pint. It was usually white wine spritzer or Babycham (with a glace cherry on a cocktail stick - the height of sophistication, so we thought). Any deviations from that were cider and very occasionally lager.

Men used to frequently order: “A pint of best and a lady’s.” When I first started behind the bar I didn’t know what 'lady's' meant - it referred to a half.

The first time I encountered a woman drinking pints of beer was at university in London. Karen, one of my flatmates drank nothing else. The first time we went to the pub, I found this fascinating. “A pint? Of beer?” I queried.

Back then, even in London, it wasn’t common for women to order pints of ale.

For decades, beer and lager adverts almost exclusively targeted men. I can still remember the old Newcastle Brown commercials which invariably featured blokes cooing over bottles of ale. Then there was that Castlemaine XXXX commercial featuring men loading dozens of packs of lager onto a pick-up truck for a social event. “Something for the ladies?” asks one. “Yes, two bottles of sweet sherry, mate,” replies the other, which causes the vehicle to collapse.

Even in the 1990s, it was extremely rare to find a woman ordering a pint of beer. In 1991 I worked in a pub in York and people were still asking for a ‘lady’s’.

Sales of Guinness have gone up thanks to the Princess of Wales and Kim Kardashian's liking for it. Picture: Pixabay

How things have changed. Now it’s as common to see a woman drinking a pint of beer in a pub as it is a man. My own daughters, in their late and mid-twenties, enjoy pints.

Beer advertising has changed markedly. As well as being tightly regulated in line with other alcoholic drinks - vital to help reduce underage drinking and alcohol dependence - it is also inclusive.

It has taken many years, but companies now realise that women are as much a part of the beer drinking community as men. It’s not unusual to see a clutch of women enjoying pints of beer.

Packaging is now more appealing to both sexes, with craft beers especially adding colour and eye-catching designs to their ales - worlds away from the brown liquid with brown labels I knew from my youth. In recent years many smaller, local breweries have popped up, adding interest and variety.

My own beer epiphany came in 1994, when I was pregnant with my first daughter. Having sampled and dismissed beer for many years as ‘dishwater’ I developed a craving for it. Trying hard to stay alcohol-free, it wasn’t the best time, but I had a couple of small glasses.

Bizarrely, I enjoyed it with a stick of celery, which I would stir around in the glass and then chew. I imagined the desire would disappear once I had given birth, but it stayed and I enjoy beer, especially the lighter, citrussy varieties, to this day.

I have to add, however, that I would never order a pint in a pub. It just seems like a lot to take on. Not wishing to sound too pathetic, I’ll stick with a ‘lady’s’.