Clara Píriz is almost 80 years old. Cristina Grela is too. They both spent their lives fighting: for the right to decide over their own bodies, against gender-based violence, for equality. Now they’re fighting a different battle: they don’t want to grow old alone, nor do they want to do so in a nursing home.
Together with a group of feminist women in Uruguay, all over 60, they are spearheading Mujeres con Historias, the country’s first collaborative feminist housing project. It will be located in Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo. The idea is simple and enormous at the same time: each woman will have her own bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchen. But they will share a community kitchen, an events room, and even a gym space open to the neighborhood.
It isn’t a nursing home. No one there needs to be cared for. They are independent, active women who decided to choose whom and how to spend their final years, rather than let life decide for them.
Within the collective, Rita was responsible for researching similar experiences in other countries. She found models in Europe. Uruguay already has a precedent, Carpe Diem, a cooperative that began taking shape seven years ago and hopes to open in 2026.
Mujeres con Historias dreams of going further: becoming a cultural hub for the neighborhood, and a public policy model for a continent that is aging ever more rapidly.
They fought for others all their lives. Now, brick by brick, they are building the place where no one will have to grow old alone.