While the traditional gender divisions are becoming far more fluid and irrelevant in modern society, there are still a lot of areas in which men and women have different tastes and preferences.
Gambling is definitely one pastime that provides interesting distinctions in this regard, so let’s look at how things stand at the moment and what this means for people who want to get into the casino scene.
The popularity factor
There is an interesting distinction in the popularity of gambling activities depending on the gender of players in the world of online casinos, according to studies.
Men are more likely to have placed a wager via the web in the past year than women, even though at land-based venues the gap is much narrower.
Indeed around a fifth of women who have never gambled said that they simply hadn’t considered it as an option at any point, which has more to do with the way that betting services are marketed than any innate gender distinction.
Things are starting to change, with popular iGaming websites like NewCasinos showing that big brands are targeting women as well as men with their promotions and marketing efforts, rather than only chasing one half of their potential audience.
The game-based differences
Even when women do gamble, they tend to gravitate towards certain types of activities in larger numbers, while men are swayed by their own preferences for play experiences.
Lotteries are a good example of this, with far more women showing a preference for purchasing tickets than men. Meanwhile online bingo is a big hit with women, while men prefer sports betting and poker.
No doubt marketing is once again partly to blame for these divides, and there is also the matter of how gambling is portrayed in the media. Most movies about casinos show them filled with men, who play high stakes games while the women look on, and no doubt this influences how gambling is perceived.
The motivations
There are lots of reasons that people turn to gambling for entertainment, and for men the main motivation is having fun, with a smaller proportion of women citing this as a factor that shapes their casino decisions.
Surprisingly the proportion of women who gamble because it allows them to fantasize about walking away with a big win is higher than men.
Again, this could be traced back to outside pressures, perhaps because women are still less likely to be financially independent and so see a gambling jackpot as a way to take more control of their lives.
Then there is the role that betting has in a sporting context. Men still watch more professional sports than winning, so around a fifth of males use betting as a way to augment the excitement of the games they view.
The idea of women being more social creatures than men is even dispelled by certain studies of gambling, with more men getting involved because of the community aspect of casinos both online and off.
The changing shape of the future
While these gender divides in gambling and more broadly in society might seem somewhat archaic to modern audiences, they need to be seen in a broader historical context.
The number of women using gambling services has skyrocketed over the past few decades, and what was previously an activity mostly associated with men has become far more balanced as a result.
There is no reason to doubt that this trend for change will continue going forward, meaning that in years to come there will be even less of a distinction between gambling preferences of men and women.