When stories like this pop up it appears that the New Monasticism is just a recapiculation of monastic communities that have grown out of tough times, revival and desperate measures.

Richard Woodward writes in a travel account about beguines in Belgium.  The beguines,

Unlike sisterhoods that required a life spent apart from society under vows of chastity, these Catholic women looked for holiness outside monastic norms. Although they lived and prayed together within an enclave, partly as a form of mutual protection — some historians believe they banded together after losing their men to the Crusades, which left behind mainly criminals and louts — beguines were not confined to the cloister. Many ministered to the poor and sick outside their walls. Lifelong celibacy was not required either. They could leave the order and marry (but not return).

---Woodward, A Lost World Made by Women, NYT.

The beguines have basically fizzled out, and there are only a few communities remaining, though they have changed much of their rules and practices.  The author takes a feminist angle, portraying how the women cared for one another after the men died in the Crusades, which I think is paradoxical in that it necessitates that one does not believe women can care for themselves and that by them doing so it was "radical."  To this extent, whether someone is a bigot or a hyper-feminist, the religious devotion and life of any person within the church is not bound by gender, for there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  

We serve a God of love, and that love does not cease in times of distress or times when men are killed off in droves.  Love conquers all.