CoWomen – How female is your space?

This 2019 Coworking Europe slide deck introduced CoWomen and framed its work around the question “How female is your space?” It asked session participants to complete an online survey and said anonymous results would be revealed and discussed at the end of the session, but it did not present those results or any quantitative findings. Instead, the deck described CoWomen’s purpose, vision, activities and community principles. It presented the organisation’s central aim as improving women’s lives and linked that aim to changing the working world, helping women realise their potential, improving the working day, connecting women, and making women more visible and heard. Its activities included coworking for women, female community building, consulting companies on making business more female, advising on the creation of female spaces beyond physical design, public appearances, political engagement, and cooperation with networks and companies that supported women. Photographs showed women working and meeting in CoWomen spaces, while a community code emphasised sharing, mutual support, respect, listening, fairness, self-care, open communication, learning from mistakes, and knowledge exchange. The deck closed with CoWomen’s website, email address, and social media accounts.

Key findings

• The deck defined CoWomen’s central purpose as improving women’s lives.
• CoWomen linked coworking for women with community building, space consulting, public appearances, political engagement and external cooperation.
• CoWomen’s community code emphasised sharing, advice, respect, listening, fairness, self-care, communication, feedback and knowledge exchange.

Presented at Coworking Europe 2019