Women are gambling, too. Why don’t we see them?

With the rise in both legality and popularity of gambling, it can seem like images of both winners and losers are everywhere. Images of men, that is. Take a look at gambling advertising on TV, or even promotions offering help for problem gamblers. Men. Picture gamblers in your own head. They’re probably men, too.

This even extends to research, where numbers show that women do indeed gamble, nearly as much as men in some cases. And they may even develop gambling problems faster than men do. But almost no research exists to explore it. This is because women gamble in secret, in silence, and often with little help when things go wrong. Almost everyone can gamble these days.

Rob Csernyik is a 2022 Michener-Deacon Investigative Journalism fellow and a freelance journalist. “I wasn’t finding women used as sources in stories about gambling addiction and gambling in Canada,” said Csernyik. “And I think that as journalists, we have really failed overall coverage of the gambling industry.” 

So why does the world ignore nearly half of gamblers?

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