As a child, Leonarda Demolli often spent holidays back in Kosovo with her extended family. She grew up in London, where her family emigrated in 1998, just before the Kosovo war escalated. Demolli was five at the time.
“Growing up in the UK, in London specifically, and then going back home, you’re in-between two worlds. In the UK it’s all goal oriented, you know your whole path that you’re going to take and you understand the freedoms you’ve got in the UK, in the Western world.
“When you go back home, patriarchy is in your face. You cannot escape it. You are kind of fighting two different worlds because you’re fighting two different mentalities,” Demolli told BIRN.
She and her siblings “were raised to all help, and then going back home [to Kosovo] it was a massive culture shock just seeing the women do everything”.
When she saw her mother also embracing gender roles back home in Kosovo, “for me everything clicked. I just resisted [gender roles] so much. At the age of 11 I decided that’s not me. I will not be doing that. I was just like I cook and clean for myself at home. Everyone else can do it.”
Having rebelled against traditional gender roles from a young age, it was not surprising to her family and those who knew her when she started sharing her thoughts against patriarchal norms on TikTok.
Her ideas led Lejla Dauti, who had also moved to the UK from Kosovo as a child in 1995, to reach out in May 2024 with an idea Demolli could not refuse.
“Lejla came to me and said she had this idea for an Albanian podcast, and then we came up with the branding, the name, and pretty much booked our first studio two months later,” Demolli tells BIRN.
Demolli and Dauti started a podcast, “Trime”, an adjective in Albanian for a brave woman mainly used in its masculine form, aiming to empower Albanian women worldwide. “Every Albanian woman for us is a warrior and is pretty much a trime,” Demolli says.
Being expected to conform to traditional gender roles continues, Demolli claims, adding that “all my aunts, from my mum’s and my dad’s side, do it. It still happens today and that’s why I’m so against it because I just think – why waste your life serving someone?”
“I love our culture but I hate the patriarchy and that’s two different things,” which is where the Trime podcast comes from because “patriarchy is so damaging in our community because it’s sugar-coated in tradition”.
Demolli, a graphic and website designer, told BIRN that she has “always been quite open with my own opinions since I was a child. My mum always said that my granddad was always quite open and always fought for justice, so I have a mum that believes in justice.
“We’re a family of girls, four sisters and a brother, and my mum wanted to make sure that we knew our value. Even though I was raised in a really traditional household, being the oldest of five, I had to rebel.
“So my family were quite confused at first. My parents were kind of scared about the comments. Any parent hates seeing people swear at their child but as time has gone on they were more scared of how I would react to it rather than anything else and they’ve just seen that I just brush it off.
“They know I’m not doing anything to hurt myself, and they know that trying to stop me is not going to change anything. They’ve kind of given up in that sense,” she says.
Leonarda Demolli at around two years old in Kosovo before her family moved to the UK. Photo courtesy of Leonarda Demolli.
The Trime podcast, she says, aims to “empower and amplify the voices of Albanian women, provide safe spaces, advocacy, access to resources and address gender-based violence whilst breaking down cultural barriers”.
Demolli and Dauti have decided to do so by being very open about their own struggles and resistance.
Dauti is a licensed Independent Domestic Violence Advisor in the UK who herself survived domestic violence for eight-and-a-half years.
When she finally managed to get out of the abusive household, she started an online community on Instagram to share her experience and assist other women. She has also been open about her experiences on the Trime podcast, and has publicly come out as a lesbian.
