Etsy.com Peddles a False Feminist Fantasy

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Everyone seems to love Etsy.com, the hip online destination for selling (and buying) handmade crafts. For individual artists, it enables them to expand beyond the local craft fair and network with other, like-minded sellers. For buyers, it’s an easy way to purchase beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces. And for Etsy investors, who get a cut of every transaction, it’s a user-generated (read: low investment, potentially high revenue) business that still projects a green, anti-corporate image. There’s just one fly in the decoupage: There are virtually no male sellers on Etsy. If the site is such a great way for anyone to market handmade goods online, then why is it such a female ghetto?

After all, the site was founded by three men in Brooklyn, a haven for macho DIY-dom, and was never conceived as female-only. The home page has a minimal, modern look. The colors are not cutesy pink. “They’re orange and blue,” says Adam Brown, the site’s spokesman. “You can’t get more neutral than that.”

The crafts that sell best are not necessarily off-putting to men. Knitting is a relatively poor seller on Etsy, according to the site’s 2008 in-house survey. The number-one sales item is jewelry. While beading may be a predominantly female pursuit, stone cutting, metallurgy, and welding are not. Plenty of men design jewelry. They just don’t sell it on Etsy. The next two biggest selling categories are “Accessories,” which includes everything from scarves and money clips to belts and cufflinks, and “Art” (painting, mixed media, photography, sculpture). Men work in these mediums, too. Yet the proportion of male sellers on the site remains minuscule—just 4 percent. It’s a smaller percentage than men in nursing.

The site has tried to attract more men. It has a blog called “A Dude’s Perspective,” currently highlighting, among other things, gifts for Father’s Day. And whenever a male artist’s work is distinctive, “we try to spotlight it,” Brown says. But it hasn’t really worked. What’s the problem? “If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a genius,” Brown says.

I have a theory, and it begins with the demographics. The average age of an Etsy seller, according to the site’s 2008 survey, is 35—women’s prime childrearing years. Nearly 60 percent have college degrees, and 55 percent are married. The average household income is $62,000—well above the national mean. In other words, the Etsy.com seller is often a married woman with (or about to have) young children, with a higher-than-average household income, and a good education. These should, in sum, be highly employable women. So, what are they doing, often pursuing hobbies, or working only part-time, on Etsy?

I think for many women the site holds out the hope of successfully combining meaningful work with motherhood in a way that more high-powered careers in the law, business, or sciences seldom allow. In other words, what Etsy is really peddling isn’t only handicrafts, but also the feminist promise that you can have a family and create hip arts and crafts from home during flexible, reasonable hours while still having a respectable, fulfilling, and remunerative career. The problem is that on Etsy, as in much of life, the promise is a fantasy. There’s little evidence that most sellers on the site make much money. This, I suspect, explains the absence of men. They are immune to the allure of this fantasy. They have evaluated the site on purely economic terms and found it wanting.