Women & Gambling Services

Gambling is endemic in Australian society. NSW has 10% of the world's poker machines, and 50% of people gambling on poker machines are women, with poker machines being women's preferred method of gambling. In NSW, gambling venues, and the State Government, are reaping enormous profits from all kinds of gambling, especially poker machines.

While more gender specific research is needed around all aspects of the issue of women and gambling, it is generally acknowledged that women gamble for different reasons from men. It seems that women who gamble on poker machines especially, use this as a strategy to seek respite from their personal problems. Unfortunately as poker machine gambling is highly addictive, women can find themselves adding the problems associated with this addiction, to the problems they were originally seeking respite from.

There are two gambling counselling services specifically for women in NSW. I am employed as a gambling counsellor at Illawarra Women's Health Centre in Warilla, on the border of Wollongong and Shellharbour local government areas, and Ms. Annie Vidler is at The Woman's Centre at Campsie, in Sydney's inner west.

Both Annie and myself work with women who are gambling themselves, and women who have someone close to them who is gambling, maybe a partner. We both work with women using a feminist/wholistic perspective. Whilst actually carrying out counselling and psychotherapy with individual women is an important part of our respective roles, we are both also very concerned with community development in the area of women and gambling. We are especially concerned with facilitating and supporting other workers working with women with gambling problems.

Last year we organised a small conference around women and gambling for workers in the area. The day was divided between formal presentation of papers, and plenary discussion, and feedback from participants was positive. Women workers especially appreciated an opportunity to discuss feminist/wholistic approaches to working with women, and a chance for some R & R from the CBT imperative we all seem to be having preached at us.

Women at the conference indicated that they would appreciate an opportunity to meet together more regularly, to address issues around women and gambling.

Anyone wanting further information can contact me, Barbara, at Illawarra Women's Health Centre on (02) 4296 7077, or Annie at The Woman's Centre on (02) 9718 1955.

Barbara Bicego MAPS.

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