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Women and the Mafia

Female Roles in Organized Crime Structures

  • Book
  • © 2007

Overview

  • Shines a new light on the roles of women within criminal networks, roles that in reality are often less traditional than researchers used to think
  • Contains contributions from psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, prosecutors and journalists
  • Contributors have combined quantitative methods (statistical data, historical research) with qualitative methods such as personal interviews to come to a complete picture

Part of the book series: Studies of Organized Crime (SOOC, volume 5)

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Table of contents (17 chapters)

  1. Introduction

  2. A History of Women in the Mafia

  3. An International Comparison

  4. Conclusion

Keywords

About this book

Where is a woman’s place in the mob? Does she even have one? Is the rise in women’s involvement in organized crime the darker side of their increased presence in the legitimate workplace, or simply a reworking of the mafia’s traditional male attitudes cloaked in the guise of women’s emancipation?

The insightful essays in Women and the Mafia seek to answer these questions from a wide range of academic disciplines and trace the portrait of women tied to organized crime in Italy and around the world. This book pulls back the code of silence and shines a light on the dark image of women entangled in organized crime.

The surprising first hand accounts of mafia women in Italy not only reveal women in power, "generals in skirts", but also tales of severe abuse and violence against women.

The book introduces us to the professional women of the Argentine "mafia state", Albanian human traffickers, spies for the Russian mob, runners for Brazilian numbers rackets, and the mystique of the American gangster moll.

"When something is risky, who do they send? Women … My aunt … can kill a person with her bare hands … if she were to see me now … she would shoot me down in the middle of the street; she’s got no problem with that …

My mother made my brother feel like the boss; but she was the one who ran everything; he was the boss on the outside, but my mother had the real power … women are in charge, nothing you can do about it."

Rita Di Giovine, state’s witness against the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Giovanni Fiandaca

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Women and the Mafia

  • Book Subtitle: Female Roles in Organized Crime Structures

  • Editors: Giovanni Fiandaca

  • Series Title: Studies of Organized Crime

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-36542-8

  • Publisher: Springer New York, NY

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag New York 2007

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-387-36537-4Published: 15 May 2007

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4419-2265-6Published: 29 November 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-0-387-36542-8Published: 04 September 2007

  • Series ISSN: 1571-5493

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VIII, 300

  • Additional Information: Original Italian edition published by Università degli Studi di Palermo

  • Topics: Criminology and Criminal Justice, general, Social Sciences, general

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