ABSTRACT
Previous studies by the authors have explored the motivations of off-course bettors (Bruce and Johnson, 1992) and the role of excitement in leisure betting (Bruce and Johnson, 1995). These papers have addressed the off-course betting population as a whole, yet a potentially significant result of the developments discussed above is the likelihood that women will form an increasingly important group within the aggregate betting office clientele. It is, therefore, particularly appropriate at this time to explore differences in the betting behaviour of men and women. This chapter seeks to offer new insights in this area. To the bookmaking industry, such research offers potentially valuable insights into the female bettor, with attendant commercial applications in the strategic development of a traditionally underexploited area of the market. From an academic standpoint this study addresses, in a specific context, the need to consider explicitly the leisure experience of women. The past decade has seen a growing concern that the issues relating to women’s leisure have received insufficient or inappropriate attention. Henderson (1990) observed: ‘gender differences have not been a dominant theme in much of the leisure research. Many studies of leisure behaviour have tended to ignore possible gender differences’ (p. 233). Scraton (1994) noted: ‘It is significant that there has been little empirical research on women’s leisure since the main studies of the 1980s. There appears to be a gap in leisure research with research on women or gender relations having fallen from the agenda’ (p. 253).
