Why Women Should Build for Women | RooMate Athens

Article by Dr Sotiria Moschopoulou, Founder of RooMate Photo by Dr Sotiria Moschopoulou

Most of what we use every day wasn't built with women's actual lives in mind. Not maliciously, just by default. Whoever built it didn't have to think about walking home alone, or vetting a stranger before living with them, or the extra mental math women run before saying yes to a room, a route, a person.

When women build for women, that mental math isn't an afterthought. It's literally the starting point.

I felt this long before RooMate existed. Moving to new cities looking for a room, meeting strangers who might become flatmates, running through a private checklist I never said out loud. Is this safe? Is this person who they say they are? Would I actually feel okay coming home here at 11pm?

Nobody built anything for that checklist. So I did.

And no, nothing bad happened to me. There's no single dramatic moment I'm building from. But why should I have to wait for one, before building something that makes it safer or easier for the next woman?

RooMate exists because the questions I used to ask myself in silence deserved to be asked out loud, and built into the product, not left for every woman to figure out alone.

Building by women, for women, isn't a nice-to-have. It's the whole point.

Dr Sotiria Moschopoulou is the founder of RooMate, a trust-based roommate matching platform for women in Athens. RooMate operates as a single-sex service under Schedule 3, Part 7 of the Equality Act 2010.