Having done some work in my (relative) youth in situations where people got drunk sometimes, for me it was about self-protection. Some drunk people, when you try to help them out, get aggressive. Even if they don&#x27;t get outright violent, that they threaten is just not pleasant.<p>So I would tend to be reluctant to help people that were above a certain size or physicality. Smaller people were much less of a threat, and I was exposing myself to less danger by helping them. Women, with their tendency on average to be both shorter, lighter and having a smaller proportion of muscle, happened to be below this &quot;physical threat&quot; threshold far more often than men.<p>Some regulars I&#x27;d see intoxicated enough to know that they weren&#x27;t the violent drunk type and they&#x27;d often get a helping hand, even if they were twice my size. Conversely, some small people I knew were the violent drunk type and I didn&#x27;t get involved.