I don't really see any problem with alcohol at work events in general, but I think it heavily depends on your company culture.

The (~40 person) company I worked at before had beer fridays occasionally and pretty much everyone would join in. We'd all have a beer or two in the afternoon and call it a day. Nobody got inebriated, weird or uncomfortable. Our company was ~25% women (scientists, admin) and they all participated.

I think one difference from our situation versus the audience of this article was that a lot of people in the company had families or were otherwise "mature". I could see how that sort of could be a problem in companies with more of a young male-dominated atmosphere.