Anna Maria Milito

Female visibility in the Mafia World: Press Review 1980 to 2001

One way to analyze the recent evolution of the female role in organized crime is to review the press coverage of that theme during the period from 1980 to 2001. The choice of this period—closely linked to the more general orientation of this research and constrained by the need to demarcate the area for finding and collecting material—was guided by the consideration that investigations and observations have shown this period to be one of the most interesting for the study of the phenomenon, since it is precisely during this time that the participation of women in mafia-type criminal activities seems to have become more visible and frequent. A series of arguments justified the need for examining the presence of female figures in local and national newspapers and the value we felt would come from this line of investigation. First (and one of the main purposes of this press review), daily newspapers and periodicals constitute a valuable source for information and data about a realm (the world of mafia women) that is difficult to comprehend from the outside. Initial research studies on mafia women only began to appear between the end of the 1980s and the mid-1990s and were frequently conducted, almost “against the stream,” by female scholars interested in further study of this area. If obtaining data on the male mafia world is complicated by this association’s secret nature, especially regarding internal analysis, it is even more difficult to determine the role of women, who would be expected to be excluded a priori from any sort of participation precisely because of the male-dominated character of Italian mafia organizations. We will not dwell on this argument for now. The first part of this research report explores the nature and characteristics of the female role along with its centrality, an aspect frequently ignored and concealed precisely in order to benefit the organization’s illegal activities. We emphasize the difficulty of collecting accurate, detailed information on women in the mafia world. Aside from judicial sources, which frequently focus on male figures directly involved in criminal activities, few other areas exist for researchers studying this topic.

The Material Deprivation of Foreigners: Measurement and Determinants

We examine the material deprivation of foreigners on a sub-sample of the 2009 Italian Survey on Income and Living Conditions carried out by Istat. We employ an index of material deprivation that takes into account the regional level of analysis, and relies on the assignment of weights to deprivation items. The effects produced on material deprivation by several variables, interpreted as determinants, are investigated through a zero-inflated beta regression model.