For the first time, the majority of Swedes with a gambling addiction are women, the health authority’s latest survey figures suggest.

The report found there was no longer a gender gap among problem gamblers, of whom half were women.

And among the 45,000 people with a problem severe enough to be considered a gambling addiction, 64% were women.

That is up from just 18% in 2015 – with the surge widely being attributed to the increase in online gambling.

The survey of 5,000 people found that overall numbers of problem gamblers had dropped since the last analysis published in 2015.

But at the same time, there was a 50% increase in problem gamblers – the category in which the gender gap vanished.

The number of women with a gambling problem had been increasing over the past 10 years, the public health agency said.

Ulla Romild, the investigator behind the report, said that despite the drop in overall numbers, it was “worrying” that serious problems were increasing “and that we see an increase among women”.

source: bbc.com