First of all, if you have never consumed alcohol, you are not encouraged to begin now. Make sure to avoid alcohol if you are pregnant, trying to conceive, or are nursing. If you DO drink, make sure that you restrict your drinking to moderate levels.
Alcohol affects men and women differently.
Because women tend to be smaller than men and have proportionately more fatty tissue and less water, a women will get more intoxicated than a man from the same amount of alcohol. That's because alcohol is distributed through body water and is more soluble in water than in fat, so the blood alcohol concentration from a drink will be less for a man. Several studies have suggested that alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer. Remember that heart disease kills three times as many women under age 75 as breast cancer and that questions still remain about the link between alcohol and breast cancer. But this was just one small study, using only one type of hormone preparation.