A future of shared living: women’s visions of ageing and care work beyond the couple

Single women are at the forefront of a growing movement towards cohousing as a socially innovative response to ageing, promising mutual support and challenging the limitations of family- and market-based care. Drawing on a participatory study in northern Italy (2020–2022) with women aged 50–80 who live outside of a couple, this article explores their aspirations to a future of shared living. The findings show that shared living is commonly perceived as a compromise between family obligations and institutional care, focusing on the preservation of autonomy while enabling elective sociality and mutual aid. The article interprets them through the lens of feminist materialist perspectives, which have inspired projects of shared living while also producing a critical understanding of these experiences as contested terrains between commoning and commodification, where the organization of care work emerges as a key, yet unresolved issue. These perspectives therefore prove useful in making sense of women’s silences surrounding caregiving arrangements within cohousing in the event of intensifying care needs. This highlights the need for greater attention to be given to labour relations in research on the gendered implications of new housing and relational arrangements for ageing people.