Women’s gambling harm is still mostly discussed as a footnote to men’s. It should not be. The causes are different, the pathways are faster, and the consequences, all too often, are tangled up with violence behind closed doors, writes Rita Nasr.
Gambling reform has been all over the news lately, with federal parliament debating tighter controls on advertising, EGM design and online betting.
Most of the coverage focuses on the numbers: the $33 billion Australians lost to gambling in 2024–25, the push to restrict promotions during sport, the fight over pokies in pubs and clubs.
But what is missing from most of these conversations is a simple question. What does gambling harm look like for women, and why does it so often go unseen?
A new qualitative report from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, From coping to control: Understanding gambling experiences to inform harm minimisation policy, offers a partial answer. Researchers interviewed 30 regular gamblers, just over 43 per cent of them women, about how gambling had shaped their lives. The report was not designed to examine gender specifically. But read closely, the women’s accounts tell a story that deserves its own headline.
For many of the women interviewed, gambling became a way to numb a wound. Not always at first. Some grew up around it, absorbing it early as something ordinary in family life. One woman in her sixties described coming from “gambling people,” saying it was simply in her blood. But normalisation was only ever the entry point. What kept women gambling, and what tipped it into harm, was almost always something underneath, a pain that had nowhere else to go and a habit that offered a way to switch it off.
One woman described her gambling spiralling after the loss of a baby, spending around fifteen thousand dollars in three months before she recognised how far things had gone. Another described pouring a chunk of her divorce settlement through poker machines after her marriage ended. A third, in her sixties, described gambling as the only escape available to her after becoming estranged from her adult children and grandchildren. These are not stories about chasing a win.
This is where the research outside the AIFS report becomes essential context, because it names something the report only gestures at. Studies consistently find that women who develop gambling problems tend to progress from first bet to serious harm far faster than men, a pattern researchers call ‘telescoping’. And where men are more often drawn to competitive, skill-based betting, women are more likely to turn to luck-based, repetitive forms like pokies and lotteries, precisely because they ask nothing of you. Where you do not need to think, you just need to disappear for a while.
And here is the part we do not talk about nearly enough: for a significant number of women, gambling harm and family violence are tangled together, each one feeding the other.
Research led by Nerilee Hing at Central Queensland University has documented this as a vicious cycle rather than a single cause and effect.
Gambling venues can become a physical refuge for women experiencing violence at home, offering somewhere to go that doesn’t require explanation. But problem gambling can also intensify a partner’s coercive control, and violence itself can push women toward gambling as a way to cope. A review of multiple studies found that over a third of people with problem gambling had abused a partner, and a similar share of problem gamblers had themselves been victims of abuse.
One large US survey found that having a gambling addiction in a household roughly tripled the likelihood of domestic violence occurring.
That is the double bind. A woman managing gambling harm is not just fighting the addiction itself. She may also be managing shame, financial control by a partner, and in some cases physical violence, all while feeling she has to keep it hidden. Research on older women found many stayed silent about both the abuse and the gambling, weighing up their children’s safety, their own financial security and a belief that nobody would help anyway.
Even the AIFS report, without setting out to examine this, could not avoid it. Its content warning flags domestic and family violence alongside gambling harm and self-harm. Its authors recommend that gambling support be integrated with family violence services, financial counselling and relationship support, an acknowledgment that these harms rarely travel alone.
As federal reform moves through parliament, the conversation has largely stayed focused on advertising bans, venue design and online betting limits. All worthwhile. But if we want reform that reaches women, we need research and policy that asks different questions. Not just how do people gamble, but why, and what else is happening in their lives when they do.
Women’s gambling harm is still mostly discussed as a footnote to men’s. It should not be. The causes are different, the pathways are faster, and the consequences, all too often, are tangled up with violence behind closed doors. Until that gets named clearly, in policy and in coverage, we are only telling half the story.