Deploying the classification of women as a tool to clarify mapping varied women’s identities, this study endeavors to contribute to the theoretical framework concerning the social identities of women influenced by the culture of their own societies and the changes in their social behaviors influenced by different cultural perspectives of each woman toward the Mafia. Three types of women are introduced: conservative radicals (active and passive), defectors, and radicals. This article aims to fill this gap first by categorizing women in the Italian Mafia groups according to their roles in the Mafia family and cultural perceptions about the meaning of the Mafia throughout their lives. This diversification of women’s characters has not been categorized or conceptualized from a feminist perspective. Their relatively passive roles have evolved and diversified at the same time throughout the history since the emergence of the first Mafia group in Sicily, Cosa Nostra, in the middle of the nineteenth century (Allum 2007 dalla Chiesa 2007 Dino 2007 Fiandaca 2007 Fiume 1989 Iadeluca 2008 Ingrascì 2007a Longrigg 1997 Madeo 1992 Pasculli 2009 Pizzini-Gambetta 1999 Principato and Dino 1997 Puglisi 1990, 2005 Rizza 1993 Siebert 1996). 2 The women have embraced mostly a passive status through offering institutional support and psychological consolidation with their social roles as mothers, sisters and wives.
The role of women in the Mafia 1 has come to the fore in the last decades with their prominent and active roles in the business of their Mafia families. (Rita Atria, cited in Pickering-Iazzi 2007:155) I could go away to the tiniest corner of the world and crawl inside forever.