Wine, women and globalization: borders, barriers or (cultural) belongings?

Globalization processes often operate in ways that are highly gendered, and many of the consequences of these processes are unpredictable and unintended. One interesting consequence of the increasing interconnectedness of wine worlds across the planet has been the rise of women inside the wine industry. When wine-making operated as a solely or primarily agricultural, traditional, and earth-bound practice, it remained highly bound by localized patriarchal structures. While many such structures (as well as new forms of gender discrimination) abound, yet various changes in the processes of wine production, distribution, mediation and consumption have created new opportunities for women to operate in wine worlds and cultures.
In this paper, I draw together different factors to do with wine and gender, which today are thoroughly bound up with globalization processes. How do women drink wine or are expected, allowed, or not allowed to drink it? How are women supposed to taste wine and how do they choose wines? How is wine marketed to women? And how does gender operate in wine mediation, such as in the case of the sommelier, which as a professional category is highly globalized and exists across locations and national contexts? I argue that many female wine experiences are both enabled in the first place and also shaped by forms of mobility: geographical, social and cultural. As cosmopolitan women travel, move abroad, and claim new spaces and experiences in globalized wine worlds, they cross boundaries, counter barriers, and, eventually, create forms of belonging.