Study: More women started online gambling during the pandemic

MONTREAL – More and more women are trying online gambling for the first time, a phenomenon that will require further research in the coming years, says researcher Sylvia Kairouz.

A 2021 study of 4,500 Quebecers found that a higher proportion of women reported starting or migrating to online gambling during the pandemic, although more of their male counterparts did so.

While gambling has generally been associated with men, women are not immune to addiction due to problematic habits,” says Sylvia Kairouz, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. Through a hundred interviews with male and female participants in the study, the researcher found distinct patterns between the two, particularly in relation to the type of gambling they prefer.

“Women end up with gambling games, while men will go for poker and table games more. By making these choices, and having these tastes, the risk is much greater for women,” says Sylvia Kairouz.

Slot machines, scratch cards, lottery tickets: research indicates that women frequently use these games for escape and relaxation. Unlike men who look for thrill-seeking gaming experiences, women tend to opt for longer games that involve lower stakes.

“Often, they will say, “We feel a little hypnotized when we play, we take our minds off things and we decompress.

That’s why women like to play scratch cards – especially the long ones – and slot machines,” says Anne Elizabeth Lapointe, Executive Director of Maison Jean Lapointe.

Statistics Canada data from August 2022 also shows that higher proportions of women than men reported playing bingo (5.7) and buying instant lottery tickets or playing online games (34.8).

The same survey noted that among those who had gambled in the 12 months prior to the surveys, 2 per cent of men and about 1 per cent of women were at moderate to high risk of developing addiction problems, or about 304,000 Canadians.

“Women often seek less help than men in terms of addiction. There is still a lot of stigma attached to them, even though they are clearly targeted by the industry, whether it’s alcohol or anything else,” says Lapointe. (…) What stops women is a lot of shame and guilt.”

While the gap in online gaming participation is narrowing between the sexes, search patterns have long been thought of in terms of male habits. Women remain underrepresented in surveys, and their results tend to be generalized. For Kairouz, the phenomenon of female addictions needs to be targeted so that future studies can better address it.

“The data, if you don’t distinguish between women and men, is much more reflective of the male reality (…) We know that women’s reality is totally different: meaning they give to gambling and the function of escape and compensation in their lives are much more present,” she says.

The next round of data collection will take place from April to September, she adds, which will give a more complete picture of the situation over a period of more than two years.

“That’s really one of my research areas, the relationship between gender and play. We’re going to be able to look at the trajectories of participants, and whether they’re the same for men and women. The gender dimension is going to be extremely important for us,” she says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 17, 2023.