Industry funding body GambleAware has awarded a £250,000 grant for new research into women’s lived experience of gambling harms to a team of experts who will investigate the journeys of both gamblers and/or as ‘affected others’.

The grant was awarded through a competitive process to a team led by Kelsey Beninger, Director at IFF Social Research Agency in collaboration with Maria Fannin, Professor of Human Geography and Sharon Collard, Professor of Personal Finance at the University of Bristol, and Dominique Webb, Head of Programmes and Marina Smith Women’s Programme at GamCare.

The consortium is taking a gendered approach to understanding gambling and gambling harms in the context of women’s wider lives, with a strong focus on engaging with women with diverse lived experiences of gambling harms.

The 18-month programme is taking a mixed-methods, multidisciplinary and multi-sector approach and will include roundtables, depth interviews and community committees with women with lived experience of gambling harms.

The programme has three specific objectives

• Explore the reality and lived experiences of women and their engagement with and experience of gambling, gambling harms, and gambling treatment and support services.
• Establish and explore the drivers of gambling harms amongst women in Great Britain.
• Explore the services, interventions, and policies needed to reduce and prevent gambling harms for women.

The research has been commissioned as part of GambleAware’s wider five-year Organisational Strategy, guided by an overarching vision of a society free from gambling harms.

Alison Clare, Research Director at GambleAware, said: “Women’s experiences of gambling harms are under-researched, often presented as homogenous and in terms of how they differ to men’s experiences. We are pleased to have awarded this grant to this strong multi-agency, multi-disciplinary team which will be drilling down into the experiences and needs of different communities of women. This is an important step towards ensuring GambleAware and others are commissioning the range of treatment and support services women want and will use.

“GambleAware is committed to delivering a whole-system public health approach to gambling harms and understanding the wider determinants that drive these – including gender, health, race, ethnicity, and inequalities – is fundamental to achieving this.”