Understanding the Risk Women Tend to Metabolize Ethanol Faster than Men . Alcohol is soluble in both water and fat, thus it can penetrate all cell membranes and move throughout all body tissues. Women generally weigh less and have less body water than men making the volume of distribution of alcohol lower. Consequently blood alcohol levels can be higher in women than men when both have consumed equal amounts of alcohol. Because they frequently experience the same effects as men with less alcohol, women need to be informed of the potential hazards of achieving drinking parity with male drinking companions.
Women tend to metabolize ethanol faster than men.
Because of this lower amount of protective enzyme, more of what they drink enters the bloodstream in the form of pure alcohol. Therefore, even when low doses of alcohol are ingested in men and women, due to this decreased stomach metabolism, there is more alcohol availability in women. Over time women are exposed to higher blood alcohol concentrations than men are even though similar quantities of alcohol were ingested. This difference is greater than that explained by body weight and fat content alone. We do not know whether certain ethnic groups have a genetic susceptibility to FAS even though we do know that there are ethnic differences in the metabolism of alcohol.