Lorraine Courtney: As women juggle jobs, family and our inner critics, is it any wonder we keep pouring ourselves that drink?

We drink to celebrate good days and we drink to forget the bad ones. We drink so much we're ranked seventh highest in the world for daily alcohol consumption. To be a modern Irish woman means to be a regular drinker. When our grandparents were young, men were far more likely to be the ones with drink problems, but that's all changed.

For lots of us, wine o'clock is not just reserved for the occasional hour of boozing in the week. It's increasingly becoming a devoted time of every day. Wine o'clock is the perfect pairing to Netflix or a valid excuse to polish off an almost full bottle of wine while getting dressed up for a Friday night out on the town.

Just ask yourself, when was the last time you had a week without drinking - in a bar or in your own living room?

But if we are dealing with increasing rates of alcohol use among women, we might want to look more at the societal and familial pressures that surround women and not just women's need to behave recklessly.

Of course, there are several reasons for the rise in women's drinking habits - like the decline of the male-dominated pub scene and the wide acceptance of after-work drinking culture - but I can't help wondering if there's something else behind it too.

Every woman I know has an inner critic. You look fat in that, she tells us. All your friends are more successful than you are. Your house is a mess. You're behind at work. You need to do something about your hair. You're mutton dressed as lamb. Gosh, your forehead is wrinkled.

I blame our inner critics a lot. For spreading the notion that women can and should have a meaningful career, a perfect home, husband and children, all while looking youthful and doing regular triathlons when the only sane thing to do is to pick two out of that list and outsource or forget the rest.

I blame society too. A few months ago the UK's Mental Health Foundation thinktank carried out a survey. A massive 81pc of women surveyed said that they have felt overwhelmed or unable to cope in the past year. Only 67pc of men felt this way.

Women's work, inside and outside the home, is both structurally undervalued and, famously, never finished. It's why women's stress has been shown to peak between the ages of 35 and 44, when we are at the peak of juggling career and caring responsibilities.

It's why women are more likely than men to experience anxiety. Not because we aren't able to cope with pressure as well as men are, but because too much is being asked of us by our world.

Is it really that hard being a 21st century Irish woman, you're probably asking? I think it is. It's very tough to have the career and the partner and the babies and the yogalates.

It's tough to work your 9 to 5 and get paid 14pc less than your male colleague, to walk home from work to a chorus of catcalls and to turn on your telly to hear the men who run this country talk about why our meagre maternity leave pay needs to be taxed or how women are not on boards because we don't put ourselves forward?

On top of all this we are expected to look like an airbrushed Victoria's Secret model at all times. Why on earth would any woman want to soften the edges of this glorious reality?

Yes, it's bad to think of alcohol as a hug after a hard day at work, but until things improve for Irish women, too many of us will keep on pouring ourselves that drink.