Discontented with the male gender, some women are deciding to form working spaces that prohibit men from joining them. As Bloomberg reports, the Wing, a co-working space and social club in New York, is one example; Rise Collaborative, opening in January in St. Louis, is another; SheWorks Collective in Manhattan; New Women Space, in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and the ubiquitous Hera Hub, in Phoenix, Southern California, Washington, D.C., and Stockholm, also feature no-men-allowed spaces.
Women’s clubs have diminished from the early twentieth century, when over 5,000 women’s clubs existed; as Bloomberg notes, “Membership in these clubs peaked in the mid-1950s but has been on the decline ever since.”
Stacy Taubman, 38, founder of Rise Collaborative, stated, “Women are craving community, connection, and confidence, and that’s what we’re going to give them.”
What kind of “working-space” is the Wing, for example?
It features a library with books arranged by color, on-demand blowouts, a lactation room, and vanities holding beauty products. Some of its original members include J.Crew President Jenna Lyons, rapper Remy Ma, and Leandra Medine, founder of fashion site Man Repeller.
HeraHub’s website states that its mission is “To provide entrepreneurial women with a productive, professional work and meeting space, where they can connect with a like-minded community to collaborate and flourish.”
The Wing’s website states: “The Wing was born out of the belief that women need and deserve a multi-purpose space designed to make their lives easier, and that magic is created when women gather together.”
“To provide entrepreneurial women with a productive, professional work and meeting space, where they can connect with a like-minded community to collaborate and flourish.”
HeraHub website
Of course, feminists have been ripping all-male institutions for a while; at Harvard, feminists claimed that all-female organizations were helpful, while all-male organizations were merely breeding grounds for males to view women as sexual targets.