The role of women in Italian mafias: The “sisters of omertà” (1/3)

Main picture: Young “picciotti,” Sicilian mafiosi, at the end of the 19th century. Wikimedia Commons.

Legend has it that the three historic Italian mafias were founded by three Spanish knights: Osso, Mastrosso, and Carcagnosso. After avenging in blood the dishonor inflicted upon their sister, they fled in 1412 to the island of Favignana, in Sicily, where they wrote a code for initiates based on honor and omertà (the code of silence). It is also said that Osso remained on the island and founded the Cosa Nostra, that Mastrosso went to Calabria and created the ‘Ndrangheta, while Carcagnosso started the Camorra in the Kingdom of Naples (1).

Despite significant differences, the three organizations share the same exclusively male hierarchical system that imposes itself with violence on a territory and its inhabitants and that also mirrors itself in gender relations.

Traditionally excluded from initiation rituals and leadership positions, women in these clans have always performed subordinate roles: they relayed messages from imprisoned bosses, provided logistical support to fugitives, and taught mafia values to the next generation. But over the past few decades, their role within these criminal groups has become more complex.

The presence of women in Italian organized crime was long underestimated by the judiciary. According to a report by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), this was due to a kind of “judicial paternalism” influenced by gender stereotypes. For this reason, the first convictions for mafia association only date back to the end of the 20^th century (2), although their number has since steadily increased. The Antigone association, which advocates for rights within the Italian criminal justice system, reports that there were four women subjected to the 41bis prison regime (3) in 2003 and 12 in 2022, and that in the same year, there were 218 female prisoners in high-security wards for mafia crimes.

“Criminal organizations, particularly the most traditionalist ones, namely the Cosa Nostra and the ‘Ndrangheta, emerge from the most orthodox circles of southern Italian society. They are characterized by a deeply patriarchal heritage and a value system that serves a certain type of masculinity, within which the role of women is then evaluated according to significant differences,” Anna Sergi, full professor of sociology of law and deviance at the Alma Mater University of Bologna and honorary professor at the University of Essex (UK) and the University of Melbourne, explains to Medfeminiswiya.

“Starting in the 1990s, with the exception of certain families, Cosa Nostra opened up to a different type of criminal organization, abandoning its strictly family-based structure. The Camorra, on the other hand, is more horizontal and includes anyone who can be of help, including women, who have always been more present in the clans of Campania than in those of Calabria,” Sergi continues.

The “sisters of omertà”—the women linked to mafia clans, particularly the ‘Ndrangheta—are considered the moral and symbolic heritage of the family to which they belong.

The patriarchal code of the mafia

The “sisters of omertà”—the women linked to mafia clans, particularly the ‘Ndrangheta—are considered the moral and symbolic heritage of the family to which they belong. “Everything that happens in the ‘Ndrangheta revolves around the woman: it is for her that honor killings are committed, it is for her that honor is preserved, and it is also for her that honor is taught,” explains Sergi.

“The woman is an essential part of mafia education: she passes on the values of revenge and omertà, teaching children to behave like men to preserve the family’s reputation. A woman cannot betray her husband: if another man even looks at her, a vendetta erupts.” Thus, fathers, brothers, and sons exercise total control over her, even more so when her husband is in prison.

Indeed, if the woman remains incorruptible and inaccessible, her husband will also remain so by refusing, for example, to cooperate with the authorities.

“She cannot go out alone and cannot associate with people who displease the men who protect her,” the professor adds. “These values are passed down from mother to daughter. The belief that certain behaviors must be avoided in order not to irritate men is also internalized, as if women were responsible for how men feel.”

 The mafia code is primarily expressed through the control of bodies and sexuality: affiliates are subject to strict monogamy, with marriage serving as the test of their reliability within the “extended family.” Conversely, a wife’s value is measured by her ability to give her husband a son who will serve as his heir, while daughters are “put to good use” in marriages intended to consolidate alliances, conquer territories, and increase the clan’s prestige. “Nobody marries for love,” Sergi says.

“In many cases, sisters or younger daughters are chosen as heirs to assets and businesses, partly because they are considered less visible, and partly because they are expected to say yes.”

Simple figureheads or genuine businesswomen?

“The Cosa Nostra’s entry into drug trafficking networks and the inherent need to launder illicit money have created professional roles that are less associated with male violence and more suited to feminine physical and cultural characteristics,” writes Ombretta Ingrascì, a researcher at the University of Milan (4). However, their participation serves more to preserve the clan’s assets than to challenge traditional power structures.

Indeed, the man’s imprisonment is still the sine qua non condition for a woman to assume a leadership role—a temporary delegation that lasts only as long as his absence.

“In many cases, sisters or younger daughters are chosen as heirs to assets and businesses based on the usual criteria of family trust, partly because they are considered less visible, and partly because they are expected to say yes,” Anna Sergi explains. “Moreover, in this context, women are considered the property of men from birth: being daughters or sisters confers an identity on them, without the need for initiation rites.”

In the clans established in northern Italy, which are more modern and secularized, the daughters become lawyers, accountants, and financial experts, and often manage the family businesses, having the necessary skills and a clean criminal record. “In Piedmont or Lombardy, almost all of them pursue higher education, because education is more accessible and because that’s what society expects of them. But in the small Calabrian villages, the conservative mentality still prevails. There, young women, whether involved with the mafia or not, live in the constant ambivalence of having to choose between the false security of a stifling and restrictive but nevertheless present family, and a non-existent alternative,” Sergi explains.

NOTES:

1. The term mafia is believed to derive from the Arabic marfud—marpiuni in Sicilian, meaning swindler. Hence marpiusu-mafiusu. But since 1963, when the Italian American gangster Joe Valachi revealed to investigators that the Sicilian bosses and affiliates called it Cosa Nostra, this name has become the most widely used. The term ‘Ndrangheta is thought to derive from the Greek andragathía, meaning virility, or courage, while Camorra means dispute, or brawl, in Spanish. The three historic mafias were later joined by the Sacra Corona Unita of Puglia and the mafias of Foggia.

2. The Camorra member Anna Mazza was convicted in 1987 and Giusy Vitale, of Cosa Nostra, in 1998.

3. The special 41bis prison regime was introduced into the Italian penal system in 1992, after the Cosa Nostra attacks against magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Its purpose is to isolate imprisoned mafia bosses to prevent them from communicating with their affiliates who are still at large.

4. Ombretta Ingrascì, Donne d'onore: storie di mafia al femminile (Women of Honor: Mafia Stories from a Female Perspective), Mondadori, 2005.