The movement of Coliving is strongly related to the movement towards more women’s freedom. The liberation, from conservative housing structures, into communities where everybody is equal and not obliged to fulfill a limited role which has been imposed by somebody else, started with the increasing number of women in a well-paid job.

Where the backup of families has been substituted with house-sharing people, also cohabitation developed flexible ways of inclusion/exclusion. Therefore many Coliving structures adapted their own onboarding criteria. Especially for women, it created a better chance to live in safety and to develop a new sisterhood, supporting each other in all kinds of issues, from childcare for single working moms or organizing yoga classes and life-balance topics. Different women community styles are arising. The female students, the young professionals, the single moms, and the single 50+. All of them with some specific twist towards collaborative or community.

If we want to cite some historical sources like, – Design for gender equality – the history of cohousing ideas and realities from Dick Urban Vestbro and Liisa Horelli, tracing the insights of a longer process.

In line with the arguments elaborated by Vestbro (2010), cohousing is here defined as housing with common spaces and shared facilities. The concept is used widely in the English-speaking world, but also in Austria, Belgium, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

The term collaborative housing is recommended to be used when referring specifically to housing that is oriented towards collaboration among residents, while communal housing ought to be used when referring to housing designed to create community. Collective housing is proposed to be used when the emphasis is on the collective organization of services. The term commune is used for a communal type of living without individual apartments. We suggest that the term cooperative housing should be avoided in this context since it often refers to the cooperative ownership of housing without common spaces or shared facilities (Vestbro, 2010). Also, ecovillages fall outside the definition of cohousing, unless common spaces and shared facilities are provided.

Community building and collaboration are the main pillars of Coliving. It requires interaction and a trustful together. The scope of the communities is always defined by the members. Thats a quite important circumstance for who organize and setup the communities.

In Sweden – as in other European countries – modernist architects regarded housing with collective services as a logical expression of modernization. The word kollektivhus (collective house) was introduced. The idea was mainly developed by architect Sven Markelius and social reformer Alva Myrdal. For them, collective housing was a tool to enable women to combine housework and paid employment. Already in an article of 1932, Myrdal wrote:
“When you consider an urban apartment block, where meatballs are prepared in 20 small kitchens beside and on top of each other, and where many small nursery rooms each accommodate a little languishing human sapling – doesn’t this cry for a systematic organization, an organization in the name of collectivism?”

Myrdal thought that the possibility for women to work outside the home was a major instrument to achieve female emancipation. This was in contrast to another feminist ideal that was advocated by the author Elin Wägner, who emphasized the reproductive role of women and demanded a society that would be permeated by the spirit of motherhood (Vestbro, 1997). Myrdal also considered it important to provide a socially desirable environment for children in a situation when families became smaller and more isolated. The intention was not to dissolve the family, as was said in the conservative press, but to facilitate everyday life for a modern family with equal roles for men and women.

The first modernist collective house in Sweden was built in 1935 at John Ericssonsgatan in Stockholm. It was designed by Sven Markelius, who lived there himself for many years. The kindergarten, established according to Alva Myrdal’s concepts, was the first one in Sweden where modern educational methods were applied.

The possibility for women to enter the labour market is also dependent on the system for the care of children and older people. In contrast to Southern European countries, the Nordic ones provide an extensive system of care, which enables women to enter working life without having to think about childcare. This has, however, been combined with the segregation of labour markets into female and male areas. The public sector still employs mostly women in low paid jobs, which in turn is reflected in the pay gap between women and men. The occupational division in Southern European countries is more even among women and men, and consequently, the salary gap is smaller. In South Korea anyhow the salary gap is still around 24%. For single woman with ambition to independency it could be a problem.

It is obvious that cohousing has brought support to people living in isolation or who wish to lead a more sustainable life. It has also been able to shake the traditional patriarchal division of domestic work. However, cohouses could open up even more to society by liaising with the neighbourhood at large, like some of the collective houses have done in Stockholm, or by leading to a new housing policy. The examples of The New Everyday Life seek to transform the neighbourhood environment into a supportive infrastructure of daily life at the centre of which cohousing could be one of the intermediary levels. It would be interesting to see an implementation of the speculations of Dolores Hayden (1991/2005), about the design of the non-sexist City.

For many societies, the female way of independence is still long and not always well accepted. On the other hand, there is a chance that also in Asian societies the concept of sisterhood, between profession and personal private life, develops some new form of Coliving. Let’s get surprised!