ladies who ink

The hard data seems hard to come by, but all the anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that the tattoo world is pretty seriously male dominated. The women tattoo artists interviewed in this New York Times article have pretty mixed feelings as to how pervasive sexism in is in the industry, as well as the value of a tattoo artist convention solely for female artists. (Marked for Life is an annual conference that gets women tattoo artists together.) Which reminds me that I'd really like to do some extended thinking on female separatism soon. But probably not right now, because I'm sleepy.

Meanwhile, here in the Bay Area, we've got Diving Swallow, Black and Blue Tattoo, and Sacred Rose Tattoo, for starters. There may be more, but it's a weirdly hard search to do. P.S. Hey Yelp: What's up with that? Why can't I search for "women-owned business"? Thanks. Actually, that's a great point. I just searched for "women-owned businesses" on Google and came across this helpful site for women who'd like to open a business, brought to us by the Small Business Administration, who also maintain this (warning: glaringly ugly!) directory of women-owned businesses around the country. It's impressively long and the index isn't even alphabetized, so I can't believe I haven't used it before. Right. This information should be free and friendly, people. No reason why not.

Want to know more? The SBA also maintains this handy page of recent studies and research on women owned businesses. Neato!