| The research presents the social construction of Gambling and tests the effects of structural characteristics on the participation in gambling. This new theoretical approach of studying legal gambling is based on social stratification theories. The conceptualization of gambling as a channel of complementary social mobility shed light on the participation in gambling. The data analysis was conducted by a series of one-way analysis of variance, logistic regression analysis, multiple regression analysis and Hierarchial Linear Models (HLM) based on a representative sampe of the urban adult population in Israel (N=710). Although the economic consideration in the social construction of gambling is higher among women, the results present a significant lower participation of this gender. Gambling is feared, both socially and economically, towards the attainment of the legitimate goals of equality of distribution. The findings support the hypothesis of gambling as a complementary social mobility. However, the access to this mobility channel is determined by gender and therefore restricted for women. The tendency to choose complementary mobility channel such as gambling signifies a solution, which has an element of protest, against the social opportunity structure. Gender participation in gambling may be interpreeted as an exprerssion of social entitlement on the one hand, and as a dissatisfaction of unfulfilled claims for social and citizenship egalitarian rights, on the other hand. |
Updated 05/20/2006