Crafting Industry

Traditionally defined as a skilled practice of a practical occupation, a craft is often seen to exist in counterpoint to an art which is innately impractical and creatively significant. Crafts and women's involvement in crafting practices are common to every community across sociocultural and political economic contexts. Spanning the globe, in country markets in France and Burma as well as urban farmer's bazaars in the Congo and Peru, one can find women's artifacts for sale.

Whether a basket of vegetables and fruits, a patchwork quilt, a jar of honey, a string of sausages, a braided rug, a package of cheese, a knitted hat, or bouquet of flowers, the presence of handmade products is ubiquitous, and women's centrality in the production of the homemade and locally grown is evidenced throughout the world and has been this way for centuries. Women's involvement in the crafting industry predates the industrial era.

What is unique to crafting practices in the early 21st century is the emergence of the Internet and the creation of online socioeconomic networks related to women's crafting practices. These networks, whether they are embedded within a friendship framework, such as Facebook or Myspace, situated within a craft-specific environment, such as Ravelry or Etsy, or independent personal sites, have facilitated the merging of craft and art, the personal and the public, as well as the marketable and the unsalable simultaneously. Gendered crafting practices, including but not limited to, sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidering, decorating, weaving, quilting, bookmaking, and cooking, are now written about and photographed fastidiously in ways that have created a new and vibrant social world. Through its innately democratizing nature, the Internet allows any and every women with access to the Internet, whether in her home, the public library, or a cybercafé, to create her own space for self-expression and documentation of her personal habits and hobbies, especially crafting.

A variation on the 1880s and 1960s “back to the land” movements with an emphasis on the organic, the homegrown, and the natural, today's female crafters use their blogs to inspire and delight, but they also sell a range of products, including patterns, books, music, yarn, and fabric. The Website http://Etsy.com was started in 2005 by a team of computer science engineers, public relation specialists, and investors who posited that a substantial income could be generated by facilitating community connection between crafters and crafting aficionados.

As of late 2009, http://Etsy.com generated between $10 and $13 million in sales per month. Its popularity has increased in the global economic depression, buyers continue to seek the inexpensive and the uniquely sentimental, and sellers continue to use http://Etsy.com as an online marketplace because of its outspoken commitment to the homemade community. As a member of the http://Etsy.com community, one can own a “shop,” participate in community forums and workshops on a variety themes and practices, and define oneself in relation to specific subcommunities of sellers. Women's involvement in the crafting industry continues to evolve as does the definition of craft itself.