Women and Gambling Problem Statement

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the new increasing trend of gambling by females of all ages and demographics. The first set of paragraphs will discuss the ultimate reason I chose to explore this new and increasing trend in the world of gambling. The paper then gives the readers some detail history into how women got into gambling and how their participation has increased over time. I then turned my attention to researching the Tucson Az area for possible indications of addiction. The articles I read all took place in big cities like Vegas, New York, Atlantic City, New Orleans and Chicago. The ethical issues I discussed in the paper included Voluntary Participation, Informed consent, Risk or Harm, Confidentiality, Invasion and labeling (generalizing). I annotated why each one of these issues could be a potential problem and how I would combat against their respective threat. The test and procedures portion discussed my ability to observe and question the participants as a way to gather information that will give possible or negative correlation between gambling addiction and gambling socially as a hobby. My measurement techniques include observation, interview analysis, questionnaires and reviewing of older studies done on the subject. Hopefully my research will generate more information that was previously overlooked.

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Women and Gambling Problem Statement

A year ago I visited a local casino in Tucson Arizona and while looking around the establishment; I noticed a large amount of young and old females' cohabitating in the place. This was pretty surprising to me because I never knew females were even into gambling that much. I thought that maybe this was just a coincidence and I might have came in on a good night(night where females just happen to come and have fun), so I went back a week later and I saw just as many women and most of them were the same females I had seen on my first visit. Needless to say; I talked to my wife about it and said told her that I thought females gambled just as much as men, she scuffed at the idea and told me that couldn't be true "because most women would rather shop than give their money away to a machine".

Well what my wife said made sense but I wasn't buying it, so I decided to look into the issue a little more. Form the beginning of the research I ruled out women gambling more than men because of a article I read involving the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This article discussed the APA conference in 2001 that was held to talk about the problems of gambling. At the meeting, two new studies on a "gender gap" in gambling addiction were presented. Some issues that arised were that only about one-third of gambling addicts are women, but a Brazilian researcher, Dr. Hermano Tavares, studied a group of men and women in a treatment program and found that women progressed through the stages of problem gambling 2.5 times faster than men. In fact, they raced through the transition from "intense gambling" to "seeking treatment" four

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times as quickly (Cosh, 2001). After seeing this article, I had other questions that arose like" What effect does gambling have on women?", "Why does addiction effect women differently than men?" So for the sake of this class I needed to come up with a testable question that could in fact be a creditable research investigation and also conquer my curiosity on female gamblers.

I ultimately came up with a question that would answer all of my inquiries

on female gambling. This question is "Is gambling a problem for females or a hobby?". I chose this subject because it gave me a very broad spectrum to work with. Some of the items I will look into under this investigation will focus on the "History of women gambling, motivation behind gambling, problems involved with female gamblers, gambling trends, addiction trends and comparison between women with regular hobbies and male gamblers to female gamblers. I feel that this investigation will be beneficial to the ongoing investigation into why females are turning to gambling in bigger outlets than at anytime in history.

Female gambling is not a very new thing; Women have been involved with gambling since the late 1500's with the invention of playing cards. Throughout the ages, their involvement has been increasing and is more visible. In the past, women who gambled had to hide it from their friends and family. This is no longer the case (info@womenandgambling.com). Because this is the new trend, we must find a way to understand the reasons behind this new female gambling lifestyle before more women end up throwing away life savings, pensions and college tuitions.

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I would like to contribute to this research by doing so in a local market like Tucson Az, this is important because most of the research that I found was conducted in big markets like Las Vegas, New York, New Orleans, Mississippi and New Jersey, Illinois and Florida. I think an investigation here would put the spot light on a total different demographic than those areas of the nation. According to Harrah Entertainment National Survey, More than 50 million American adults made nearly 300 million trips to casinos in the United States in 2002 and the median household income was $50,716, 64 percent had white collar jobs(Business Editors, 2002), majority where of Caucasian descent and lived in those cities I named above. This investigation would give you the lower income community, who do not have a median income of $50,000, most do not have white collar jobs and are not Caucasian. Diane Rae and Lisa Avery of the Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions concluded that gender and economic disadvantage of women play a major part in the structuring of potential gambling problem, this tells me we must expand the research that has already been done to a region of the nation that is not synonymous with gambling(lower income areas). My project will respectfully and ethically gather data on the lower economically women who reside in the Tucson Az area but before I look into my design and procedures, I would like to look at the existing research that has already taken place on this subject.

Women and Gambling Literature Review

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