Male and female gambling
Yet Ch. Darwin pointed out that there is a greater difference between the sexes of humans than between the sexes of most quadrupeds. The biological differences between the sexes can be explained on the basis of the evolutionary theory of sex proposed by V. Geodakyan, which is also applicable to the interpretation of the differential gambling of men and women.
The basic idea of the theory is that a biological species consists of two asynchronously evolving but linked subsystems. The male sex is the operational subsystem of the population and the female sex is the conservative subsystem. A species must simultaneously change and remain constant. It is a contradictory task: to adapt, to change, one has to test the environment and its effects, to take risks, and to preserve what has been achieved, one has to avoid new, unknown effects, to avoid risks.
The male and female sex share these tasks. In Geodakyan’s view, the female gender tends to stabilise selection, while the male gender makes selection more dynamic.
These biological tasks are matched by the psychological characteristics of the sexes, which can be assessed more accurately by looking at the behaviour of larger groups of people rather than individuals, so that gender differences are not the expression of the opposing characteristics of each individual of the sexes, but are revealed. It is also appropriate to discuss gender differences in relation to the roles of men and women in different social structures.
In some cultures, notions of masculinity and femininity are linked to past and present attitudes towards gambling and its risks. Gambling was a popular activity in ancient Rome, but unwritten rules and laws provided unequal opportunities for men and women to play. Men could do it everywhere and all the time, women only during the Bona Dea (Latin for ‘Good Goddess’) festival, during which women could drink strong wine and gamble.
Nowadays, in the West and in many other countries, there are no longer any legal restrictions on women’s participation in games of chance or lotteries. However, social and cultural factors and prevailing attitudes towards femininity and masculinity influence the choice of leisure activities. For example, research shows that women’s participation in gambling is increasing, as it has become more acceptable for them to visit gambling venues on their own, unaccompanied, and that participation in online games has little to do with gender-specific behaviours.
It is plausible to assume that these factors are also responsible for the increasing participation of women in lotteries. For example, in 2002, 55% of men and 42% of women in the USA said they had played the lottery. This gender gap has been steadily decreasing. A survey of Florida lottery players conducted in 2014 showed that 51% of players were male and 49% female. The same distribution was shown in the 2015 California Lottery survey, which showed that the state’s lottery players are roughly evenly split between men and women, and in the 2018 Vermont State Lottery survey, 54.5% of lottery players were women.
The analysis of the specificities of men’s and women’s participation in lotteries in Lithuania identified differences in participation and attitudes towards lotteries. Women played lotteries more often than men and remembered their game better than men, and watched lotteries on TV more often than men. There was also a difference in the attractiveness of lotteries for women and men.
According to the book Responsible Gaming. MRU. Vilnius. 2022.
