Core Values

SheCoSystem’s core values are aligned with the values of the Coworking movement. The movement has five core values:

  • Community

  • Openness

  • Accessibility

  • Sustainability

  • Collaboration

The added bonus for a female-focussed coworking space is that the coworking values ARE feminine values.

Over the last few years, the business world has been paying lots of lip service to the idea of embracing feminine leadership styles and workplace values (see these articles from Forbes and Harvard Business Review). But the coworking movement is founded on these values…so let’s OWN them.

I recently read Gloria Steinem’s book My Life on the Road in which she talks about a time in the 1970s when she spoke with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, a female leader in India who had worked with Gandhi. Steinem was trying to convince Kamaladevi to apply Gandhian tactics to women’s movements. After listening patiently, Kamaladevi kindly informed her, “We taught him everything he knew.” She explains that Steinem had “the Great Man theory of history, and hadn’t known that the tactics we were drawn to were our own.” In the same spirit, it is important to unveil the feminine energy that pulses through the world of coworking.

Like so many other aspects of the feminine paradigm that feminists have been working so hard to honour and make space for in our world, we can now celebrate the success of these values. And coworking is a worldwide movement worth celebrating. In the last ten years, thousands of coworking spaces have opened worldwide. According to recent statistics from the 2015 Global Coworking Survey, the industry has a growth rate of 36% over the last 12 months, and an estimated 510,000 coworking members around the world who are choosing to work this way.

So why not call attention to the fact that this is the way we’ve been doing it all along? When something is natural and timeless, it finds a way. The paradigm of competition, fragmentation and hierarchical leadership no longer serve us. A more interdependent and collaborative society is the only way toward a more sustainable future.

Give us a movement that validates this way of being, give us a structure that facilitates it - and we’ll thrive. Women deserve to take ownership of a workplace culture that empowers and inspires them to be their best. That’s why I’m creating the shecosystem, and that’s why I hope you will join me.

Over the next little while I will be elaborating on each of the five core values.