Sexism in the alcohol industry
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Women in the drinks industry share their stories to try to change the way women are treated in pubs, clubs and bars. After many shared stories of harassment in craft breweries, the consensus is: enough is enough. Charlotte Cook, an experienced brewer, says the most important thing is to believe the stories, as some are being silenced by UK libel laws. Professor Chris Land from Anglia Ruskin University explains how certain workplaces can create unhealthy cultures, while bartender Nichola Bottomley says she was inspired to speak out after years of abuse working in pubs and bars. In the US, Victoria James, who was named the country's youngest sommelier at 21, has inspired other women working in wine to come together to speak out - and her book led to many responsible to resign. Becky Paskin, journalist and co-founder of Our Whisky, talks about the repercussions she faced after calling out sexism in the whisky industry. While Brad Cummings, co-founder of craft beer company Tiny Rebel tells us why it's no longer business as usual after the firm was called out by former employees online.
(Images: Alcohol being poured. Art159 / Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:06.6 | I think any woman in any industry ever experiences sexism. |
| 0:11.9 | But for me, it was something that I had noticed every day in my working life. |
| 0:18.6 | Meet Jager Wise, a craft beer brewer and presenter of the BBC's food program. |
| 0:25.4 | Jager has been in the beer industry for the last nine years. It's young, hip and cool, just like Jager. |
| 0:33.3 | But unlike Jager, it's dominated by white men, and sexism is rife. |
| 0:40.1 | There is also that aspect of kind of do you know enough? |
| 0:44.7 | If you talk about craft beer, if you're an expert behind the bar talking about craft beer, |
| 0:49.8 | one of the questions I hear all the time is, do you even like beer? |
| 0:53.4 | And you're like, well, there's head brewer of a brewery for how many years, |
| 0:56.2 | and I'm a beer simile, you'd hope I like beer, right? |
| 0:59.6 | And it's a question you hear all the time that you just don't hear to your male counterparts. |
| 1:05.3 | But then I think these issues are similar for women generally, I think, in the workplace. |
| 1:09.1 | I don't think it's something particularly unique to be it. There's just booze involved. In the last year, women across the alcohol |
| 1:18.0 | industry have begun calling out sexism on social media and Jager decided to explore the problem |
| 1:25.6 | in her BBC food program. |
| 1:28.4 | One of the reasons we spoke about it was because it had been in the news a lot. |
| 1:33.8 | So there was the whiskey industry, had lots of articles printed, the wine industry, had a big |
| 1:39.0 | discussion about this, and again, craft beer was in the news again. |
| 1:43.4 | So it was something that was very very current |
| 1:45.6 | largely in part because of the um the instagram stories that were coming out at the time it first |
| 1:52.8 | started in the u.s brewers and hospitality workers came out and said this has happened to me |
... |
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