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Female Forward International
Not all heroes wear capes, but a lot of them wear saris, duppattas and whatever they want to.

Female Forward International South Asia
Female Forward International South Asia © FNF Sri Lanka

At the wake of this Pandemic women are working twice as much. They are taking care of the household and also working from home. Their work hours as compared to men has been doubled. But in a complex society like ours intersectionality also plays a huge role in the discrimination against women.

A Tribute to All Female Heroes, a video made by the #FemaleForwardInternational initiative by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, celebrates the lives of women who had been forced to cope with the pandemic, while also working twice as hard as they would usually in order to take care of their household while working from home. This video features women from different backgrounds and different ethnicities, all doing their day-to-day work in order to make a better world for themselves and their family - from tea pluckers to cooperative workers, and even to students.  

This multilingual video, with its utilisation of the most common languages used in Sri Lanka - Sinhala, Tamil and English - showcases Sri Lanka's inherent multiethnicity and how women of every calibre and ethnicity deserved to have their voices heard and acknowledged as heroes for all the work they had done for the country. 

With its display of people from different backgrounds, and what they undergo in their daily lives, highlights how intersectionality is more important than ever in these days, and plays a huge part in how they are perceived by society and by themselves. These everyday heroes show how empowerment concerns everybody, and is not just a concept reserved for those in higher classes. These people who contribute to society through any means that they can, are all deserving of basic human respect and deserve to have confidence in who they are. 

This video goes on to say that "You are human, and you are free" - a sentiment that women these days deserve to hear more than ever, with their daily lives getting harder and harder with the pressure of a pandemic and an uncertain political climate hanging over their heads.