Trade like a tradwife

I love to complain about my phone. It has ruined everything, from friendships to childhood to my memory. But if I stop the bitching and think clearly for a moment, I must admit that my phone is a far more liberating bit of kit than the washing machine or the contraceptive pill.

Largely that’s because my phone allows me to work from anywhere. For many women, particularly those with children, this is a dramatic and radical change. Claire Roscoe’s story is a good example. Both she and her husband lost their City jobs in the wake of the pandemic. Pregnant with her second child, Claire needed to find work again promptly.

Just over a year ago, Claire set up Tuesday’s Child, a company selling embroidered children’s jumpers via the e-commerce platform Etsy. The jumpers are knitted in Britain and Claire then embroiders them herself. She oversees every part of the company from home. ‘I pretty much run my business through my phone,’ she says. ‘I’ll respond to messages from customers at midnight, because I can.’ When I message Claire late one evening, she replies immediately.

Last year, sellers on Etsy (which is known for its handmade or vintage items) traded $11.6 billion in goods. In Britain, 95 per cent of Etsy companies are run from home, 77 per cent of its sellers are women and 25 per cent live in rural areas. Half the sellers have financial dependents and a third have children under the age of 18.

Etsy is just one platform but there are plenty of others such as Shopify, eBay and Vinted. They combine technology, scale and global reach to create a vast marketplace ecosystem, a cottage industry industrial complex. Claire now sells thousands of jumpers, mainly to other British women.