Women arrested for driving while intoxicated in the United States increased between 1998 and 2007: study

The number of women arrested in the United States for driving while intoxicated (DWI) increased nearly 30% in the decade between 1998 and 2007, according to the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF).
In TIRF’s report, State of Knowledge: Female Drunk Drivers, researchers reviewed research from the 1980s through to present day to describe the magnitude of the female drunk driver problem, the characteristics of these offenders, the current involvement of female drivers testing positive for alcohol in crashes and available strategies for managing the problem.
In 1980, just 9% of those arrested for DWI were female. That percentage increased to nearly 15% by 1996 and to 20% by 2004. The number of female DWI arrests has risen nationally by 28.8% between 1998 and 2007, TIRF reported.
Three main hypothesis explain the growth in female DWI arrests, the report says. These include:
•a trend of increased female involvement in drinking and driving;
•a dramatic reduction in arrests among males have skewed the perception of female involvement in arrests; and
•changes in legal policy and enforcement practices have resulted in the greater likelihood that law enforcement will detect and arrest female drunk drivers (for example, due to physiological differences between men and women, a woman may be more impaired at lower blood-alcohol levels).
The report can be downloaded at http://www.tirf.ca/main.php.