It is something that should be addressed and looked at. Along the same lines of MLM's offering flexible schedules, more women are realtors than men. (https://www.trulia.com/research/is-real-estate-a-mans-or-wom...)

I've read in the past that women excel at realty because they are better at networking, building relationships, and are more trustworthy among the real estate un-educated. I think the same forces come into play in MLM - women trust other women and what they're selling and are sold on the "just build out your network for success" message that MLM's seem to thrive on.

The only issue is that realty can lead to success, while MLM's are designed from the very start for people to fail.

So one of the things is that MLMs have sort of succesfully branded themselves as not-a-job in a lot of cases. A large chunk of religious fundamentalists see women working outside the home as sort of against Gods will BUT single income houses are harder to maintain these days, especially if you have a bunch of kids. Enter MLMs telling these women A) it's not like a reeeaaalll job B) you can make money to support your family.

Women usually spend more on products, and pyramid schemes are definitely targeting consumers by dangling the carrot of helping them pay for the product they are consuming so much of, so it'd make sense that they'd mostly be made up of women. It's not always "falling for" in the sense that women are not always caught up in the scammy part; sometimes they really like the product that much, and sometimes it's a social thing that they're OK paying for to stay in the community. If anything that there exists consumers of pyramid schemes that are OK partaking in the pyramid part but not taking it seriously makes it worse, because it legitimizes the whole activity in the eyes of a) uninvolved husbands/bystanders and b) potential marks who are really falling for it.

This is like saying children are more likely to waste their money on toys, or young men are more likely to fall for military recruitment propaganda. It's "true", but it's got some weird correlation/causation misunderstanding.

It's not that they are more prone to falling for the business side of it, it's that they were attracted to the company for reasons besides the money they could make.

All of them were extremely happy LulaRoe customers BEFORE they became sales people.

I think if an MLM targeted the people on hacker news with a product that could make a solid side income through Programming meet-ups, mechanical keyboards, or video games, it would get a lot of us. Even if 2/3's of the people who attempted to make money the same way lost money on the MLM.