Women are reclaiming pubs and revitalising their communities

The clink of a glass. The low hum of conversation you are not required to join. The gentle dignity of simply being among other people.

A good local is one of the few places left where you can arrive empty-handed, with no ticket, no booking, no “reason”, and still be welcomed. In a pub, in modern Britain, it is still normal to talk to strangers. You can sit at the bar and be left in peace, or drift into company. Either way, you are seen.

Right now, the nation is discussing pubs mainly as financial casualties. Since the National Insurance row, they have been held up as proof of how hard it is to do business in Britain. Wages are up, bills are up, duty is up, margins are down.

These arguments are critical. Pubs do need financial help. But if we reduce them to spreadsheets, we miss their purpose. We make it easier to let them disappear. And when we do, we will not just lose a business. We will lose a public house.

At the same time, something else is happening in Britain that should chill us. Loneliness is spreading, and it is getting younger. ONS data published last month revealed that four in ten 16 to 24-year-olds say they often feel lonely.

The Belonging Barometer, a landmark study by the Belonging Forum, makes it starker. Across the population, 29 per cent say they feel lonely often or some of the time. Among women aged 18 to 24, that rises to 51 per cent. Renters report it more too, 40 per cent compared with 29 per cent overall. Many, of course, live in overcrowded homes with strangers and no living room. 

Add it up and the pattern is clear. Life is lived through screens. Real friendships are harder to make and easier to lose, especially for women.

That is why pubs matter more than ever. Not because everyone must drink, but because we need warm public rooms where people can gather (especially in a cold, grey climate like our own), and where belonging can take root.

But pubs must also evolve, and many already are, shedding the old image of laddish, smoke-filled spaces. It makes business sense, too. As alcohol becomes harder to profit from, diversification is essential.

Coffee in the morning. Arts and craft sessions midweek. Family-friendly hours, proper baby-changing facilities, step-free access for buggies. Alcohol-free choices that feel celebratory, not second best. Zero tolerance of harassment. A pub where walking in alone as a woman feels normal and safe.

That is what meaningful inclusion looks like: safe, welcoming, and designed for different kinds of customers.

The data indicates the shift is already well underway. Our Belonging Barometer found that 29 per cent of women name a pub or bar as their main “third space”, somewhere other than home or work to spend time, just a quarter fewer than men (39 per cent). Among women aged 25 to 34, it is 32 per cent.

Research by the British Beer and Pub Association corroborates the trend, with one in five women now seeing pubs as the most crucial part of the community, and almost half ranking the pub in their top three assets when choosing where to live.

This is not peripheral. It is the future market.

It is easy to forget that it was not even a legal right for women to sit and be served at a pub bar until 1982. You can still feel the hangover of that history in certain spaces. The lone woman watched. The solo soft drink treated as suspicious. Pubs such as the Bird in Hand in Buckinghamshire, run by a team of women, are showing what change looks like and it was great to see them profiled in the press recently as part of a debate about women “reclaiming” pubs.

If politicians want to save pubs, they should see them not only as businesses, but as vital and increasingly inclusive social infrastructure, essential for fighting loneliness and bringing belonging back.

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Kim Samuel is the Founder of the Belonging Forum.

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