Coworking has always promised something that traditional offices often struggle with: a more human way to work. More flexibility. More community. More space to build your own path.
But equality does not happen automatically just because people work under the same roof.
Spaces where people feel safe, respected, and able to grow are designed that way. Over the years, community-driven operators have shown that belonging is not a side effect of coworking, but the result of clear values, thoughtful systems, and everyday care.
This article looks at how gender equality in coworking affects the quality of a space, drawing on research, industry data, and lived experience from coworking leaders like Liz Elam.
What we mean by “equality” in coworking
In coworking, equality is not just about having a balanced member mix.
It is about how the space works in real life:
- Who feels comfortable joining, staying, and speaking up
- Who gets visibility and leadership opportunities
- Who can access resources like funding, mentoring, and networks
- Who feels safe in the space, day and night
- Who gets listened to when something needs to change
When equality improves, the quality of coworking improves too. Members trust the space more. Community becomes stronger. Retention becomes easier.
As Liz Elam, founder of GCUC, puts it:
“We have loads of women working in coworking, but not enough owning and scaling coworking.”
That gap between participation and power is where equality becomes a practical issue, not an abstract one.
Women are a big part of coworking, but ownership and funding still lag behind
Women are not newcomers to coworking. In fact, women became a majority of coworking members around 2019, based on the Global Coworking Survey reporting shared by Deskmag and other industry sources. (Deskmag’s summary is a helpful snapshot: Coworking Space Members: It’s a girl!.)
Leadership tells a different story.
Across entrepreneurship and startups, women still face major funding barriers. In 2023, women-founded startups received 2 percent or less of venture capital funding in both Europe and the United States, based on PitchBook data summarized by the World Economic Forum.
That gap matters for coworking. Funding influences who can start a space, who can scale to a second location, who can survive difficult years, and who can invest in accessibility, staffing, or safety upgrades.
Liz has spoken openly about this imbalance from personal experience:
“Honestly, the biggest challenge I faced in coworking was getting funding. The men seemed to always get the money.”
Her response was not to compete louder in the same system. Instead, she stepped away from it and focused on building GCUC into a platform centered on collaboration and shared learning. That decision reflects a broader pattern in coworking, where many women leaders prioritise sustainability and community when access to capital is uneven.
Research shows coworking can reduce inequality, but only when it is designed to
Research supports what many operators already sense. A 2021 study published in Gender & Society found that coworking spaces can reduce inequality through inclusive practices, accessible pricing, and social structures that make networking easier across groups.
At the same time, these outcomes are not automatic.
Spaces can unintentionally recreate inequality through pricing that limits who can join, social dynamics that reward the loudest voices, informal networks that exclude newcomers, or layouts that separate rather than connect.
This is why Liz’s advice to operators starts with listening, not branding:
“Listen first, design second.”
Understanding what people actually need, and letting that shape policies, events, and amenities, is where inclusive coworking begins.
How equality improves the quality of coworking
Equality is not only a values topic. It changes what members experience day to day.
When people feel safe, seen, and respected, they stay longer. They participate more. They recommend the space to others. Inclusive policies and community care are not extras. They are part of the product.
Standards matter too. Data from the UK Office for National Statistics shows that women experience harassment more often than men in workplaces. Shared space alone does not prevent this. Clear expectations, visible reporting channels, and trained staff build trust.
Spaces that invest in clear guidelines, visible reporting channels, and trained staff send a strong signal to members. Problems will be taken seriously. Boundaries exist. Care is part of how the space operates.
In this sense, equality shows up less in statements and more in systems. It is reflected in how predictable the experience is, how conflicts are addressed, and how much trust members place in the people running the space.
What women leaders have contributed to coworking culture
Many women leaders have pushed coworking forward in ways that improved quality for everyone, not only women.
Their influence often shows up in how spaces are run rather than how they are branded. This includes more intentional approaches to community-building, programming that supports real life and caregiving, and greater attention to emotional safety and hospitality. It also includes stronger mentorship structures and more open conversations about access, pricing, and power inside a space.
These choices often come from leaders who are used to navigating systems that were not designed with them in mind and who build alternatives based on lived experience.
You can see this clearly in spaces that have been built around care as a core operating principle. JuggleHUB in Berlin, for example, combines coworking with professional childcare, making it possible for parents, especially mothers, to stay active in their careers without choosing between work and family. The space did not treat caregiving as a side concern, but as a structural part of how work actually happens for many people.
Beyond culture, this leadership has shaped how coworking operates day to day. Clearer onboarding, more consistent communication, and systems that balance care with business needs have helped make coworking more sustainable for both members and operators.
These contributions are one reason coworking has developed its reputation as a more human alternative to traditional office life. They have influenced expectations around flexibility, trust, and belonging that now define the sector.
This is also why visibility matters. When women are present across coworking communities but underrepresented in ownership and scaling, the industry risks losing leadership approaches that have already proven valuable. Keeping these perspectives visible is not about balance for its own sake. It is about retaining the practices that have helped coworking mature into what it is today.
Practical guidance from Liz Elam for indie coworking spaces
When asked what independent coworking spaces can do to better support women founders, freelancers, and leaders, Liz’s advice stays practical and grounded. Rather than focusing on campaigns or one-off initiatives, she points to systems and habits that shape how welcoming a space really feels.
Listen first, then design around real needs
Listening is the starting point. Creating listening circles, surveys, or small focus groups helps operators understand what people actually need from a space. What matters is following through and letting that feedback shape programming, policies, and amenities.
Build structure for mentorship and peer support
Support works best when it is built into the community. Pairing new members with established women leaders for introductions can lower barriers early on. Peer-led groups create spaces where challenges can be shared openly, without pressure or judgement.
Treat visibility as access, not optics
Who gets seen also shapes who feels welcome. Featuring women founders in panels, newsletters, and events matters, but inclusion goes further when women are trusted with the mic as keynote speakers, workshop leaders, or advisors.
Back belonging with clear policies and flexibility
Inclusion needs structure to hold it in place. Public anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies, backed by action, set expectations for behaviour. Flexible membership options, such as part-time or childcare-friendly formats, acknowledge real-life constraints and remove silent barriers.
Make safety part of everyday quality
Feeling safe is foundational. Well-lit spaces, secure access, thoughtful layouts, and staff trained in inclusive hospitality all influence how comfortable people feel using a space fully.
Share resources, not just space
Community grows through access. Curating funding opportunities, pitch practice, or legal and financial guidance supports early-stage founders in concrete ways. Shared resource spaces, physical or digital, reinforce the idea that the community exists to grow together.
Taken together, these practices show that inclusion is not about doing more. It is about doing things with intention.
Why it shouldn’t stop at women
The conversation around gender equality in coworking often leads to a broader question: where does inclusion really begin, and where should it go next?
When asked how the role of women in coworking might evolve over the next decade, Liz Elam offered a simple but important reframing:
“Why aren’t we asking this question about everyone, not just women?”
Supporting women founders and leaders is essential. At the same time, strong and resilient coworking communities are built through intersectional diversity across gender, race, age, disability, neurodiversity, and economic background.
Challenges often overlap. Being a woman and a person of color. A freelancer and a caregiver. A founder without access to capital or safety nets. When coworking spaces focus on only one dimension at a time, many people are still left navigating barriers alone.
This is why broader inclusion practices matter. Instead of relying only on women-only formats, many spaces are building programming that elevates underrepresented voices of all kinds and shares responsibility for belonging across the community.
At the heart of this approach is a principle Liz returns to often:
“The goal is not just representation. It is ensuring that everyone feels seen, respected, and able to thrive.”
Seen this way, gender equality is not a separate initiative. It becomes a lens for understanding how power, access, safety, and opportunity are distributed and how coworking spaces can work better for more people.
Belonging, in the end, is not only about representation.
It is about creating environments where people feel respected, supported, and able to grow.
Cobot’s role in building more inclusive coworking ecosystems
Cobot’s work around inclusion goes beyond any single group. It shows up in leadership, product decisions, education, and long-term industry initiatives that aim to make coworking more accessible, fair, and sustainable for a wide range of operators and communities.
Visible leadership and values-led conversations
Kristina Schneider, Cobot’s co-founder and CPO, is one of the visible women leadership voices in coworking tech, speaking about accessibility, inclusion, and fairness in how spaces are run. Her work connects these topics to everyday operations, helping operators translate values into systems rather than treating inclusion as a separate initiative.
Supporting community-focused and mission-driven spaces
Cobot offers discounted pricing for nonprofit spaces and spaces with a clear social focus. In practice, this includes women-led coworking spaces, community-run initiatives, and operators actively working to create safer, more accessible environments. Reducing financial pressure allows these spaces to invest in care, accessibility, and community work without overloading small teams.
Improving representation at an industry level
Cobot supports initiatives such as People of Coworking, which aims to improve who gets visibility on stages and in industry conversations. Better representation means more diverse speakers, broader leadership perspectives, and fewer panels dominated by the same voices.
Cobot has also been involved in wider collaborative efforts like the Coworking IDEA project, which focuses on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility across the coworking sector. Projects like this help move conversations beyond individual spaces and toward shared standards and learning across regions.
Accessibility and inclusion through everyday practice
Cobot’s work around accessibility and inclusion focuses on how coworking spaces function in real life. Over the years, this has shown up in content and guidance on topics like neurodivergent-friendly space design, building truly queer-supportive coworking environments, and childcare-inclusive coworking models.
These topics may look separate at first, but they share a common thread. Inclusion often depends less on big statements and more on clear communication, predictable systems, thoughtful policies, and an awareness of how different people experience the same space very differently.
By writing openly about neurodivergence, queer safety, caregiving realities, and accessibility beyond physical design, Cobot aims to help operators think more holistically about who their space works for and who it might unintentionally exclude.
This approach treats inclusion as an ongoing practice. One that evolves as communities change, rather than a checklist to complete once.
Reducing the hidden workload for operators
Much of Cobot’s educational content also focuses on reducing the invisible labour of running a coworking space. Billing, policies, member management, and predictable operations are often where small teams struggle most, and where clearer systems can make a real difference.
Making these parts of the business easier to manage supports more sustainable leadership and healthier communities. This matters especially in independent spaces, where operational work and community care often overlap and where founders and community managers are already carrying a lot of responsibility.
Taken together, these efforts reflect Cobot’s broader approach. Inclusion is not treated as a separate topic, but as part of what makes coworking spaces work better for more people.
Closing thought
Equality in coworking is not a trend. It is a quality standard.
When spaces are designed so that women and underrepresented genders can lead, grow, and feel safe, the experience improves for everyone. Communities become stronger, trust grows, and coworking moves closer to the human way of working it set out to offer.
