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't get outright violent, that they threaten is just not pleasant.
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 "physical threat" threshold far more often than men.
Some regulars I'd see intoxicated enough to know that they weren't the violent drunk type and they'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't get involved.