In general, women become more intoxicated than do men after drinking the same amount of alcohol, even when differences in body weight are taken into account. The primary reason is that, on average, women have less muscle tissue and therefore less water in their body tissue, than do men. Because alcohol is distributed throughout all the water bearing tissue in a person’s body, a single alcoholic beverage is more diluted in a man’s body, and more concentrated in a woman’s body. Higher alcohol concentration means higher intoxication level.

Men and women eliminate alcohol at about the same rate, lowering intoxication by 0.015 per hour. However, because women are likely to get more intoxicated from each drink than men, it takes longer for women to eliminate the intoxicating effects of each drink.