More women struggle with gambling addiction

More women struggle with gambling addiction

Lynda Gardner stole hundreds of thousands of dollars so she could feed her gambling habit.
She isn’t alone among women in getting hooked on the lure of a casino. The problem gambling gap between men and women is closing rapidly, according to Marvin Steinberg, executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling.

In 1999, women made up a third of the problem gamblers who called the council help line. By 2004, the percentage grew to 38 percent. In the most recent study of 2008 calls, 44 percent came from women.

Casinos and online gambling are leveling the playing field, Steinberg said. Women often have issues with slot machines and bingo, Steinberg said. Women are almost three times more likely to have a problem with slots than men, the 2008 study said. The pattern mimics other addictions.

“We thought there were more male alcoholics, but we now know that’s not true,” he said.

Like Gardner, some women resort to crime. A New Hampshire school teacher has been charged with robbing a series of banks last fall, one of them in Connecticut. Police say after she hit a Plainfield bank, she ended up at Mohegan Sun.

“I evaluated another woman compulsive gambler and saw a picture of her with no mask taken by a camera as she was in the process of robbing a bank,” Steinberg said. “She had no prayer of getting away with this. It’s amazing what people do when all they think about is the next time they gamble.”

In the 2008 study, women committed fraud more often than men. In the past, women convicted of crimes got a break from judges, Steinberg said.

“The courts thought only women can take care of children,” he said. “Now they are as likely to incarcerate a woman as a man.”