Pattern, Motivation, and Prevalence: An Assessment of Gambling Among Women in Lagos State Nigeria

The study investigated the pattern, motivation, and prevalence of gambling among women in Lagos state, Nigeria. Specifically, it described the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and determined their level of participation in gambling. A purposive random sampling technique was used to select 100 respondents across 4 local government areas in Lagos state. Data was collected through the use of a detailed questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, and analyzed using descriptive statistics and themed narrative analysis. Results revealed that most of the women gamblers are in their active age (18-40), married, SSCE holders, entrepreneurs, and they have between 3-6 dependents to cater for. The majority of these women were influenced into gambling by others winning, prefers Lotto type of betting, and they have actively been gambling for 1-3years on a daily basis, enjoys betting and spends up to 50,000 monthly on betting despite making less than that amount monthly. The reason for gambling among most women is for income sustenance and they’ve been able to do some important things with their winnings, majority of the women does not encourage other women to gamble and they have never tried to stop, while most of those that stopped briefly did so because of long period of loss. The study concluded among others, that gambling is primarily driven by economic pressures and the influence of social networks, and its persistence despite high loss rates suggests that many women remain caught in a cycle of economic struggle and gambling dependency.