WOMEN’S ROLE IN TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

This document provides an overview of the literature on gender question and organized crime, focusing on the role exercised by women in the main transnational criminal organizations and particularly on the way in which gender conceptions and stereotypes have shaped the view of female figures, both inside and outside the criminal groups. n the first chapter, the focus is on the theoretical approaches and on international legal documents dealing with the theme of transnational organized crime. What emerges is that, for a long time, the assumption was that organized crime was exclusively a male domain environment, where women played the role of victims or collaborators. Only in the last twenty years the literature has undergone a gender revolution. Researches have started to question the traditional portrait of women in criminal groups, revealing they have always been active in organized crime at various levels, from supportive to more active tasks and even reaching leadership positions. These studies are essentials for states and international legal authorities in order to better understand and tackle the phenomenon of transnational organized crime with more effective policies and definitions, which still today lack of a gender perspective and are therefore uncompleted and inadequate. Moreover, the paper adopts a multicultural feminist approach as framework of analysis, in order to reach an integrated comprehension of gender in criminality, as the concept of feminine role is different according to the context in which the criminal associations develop and take action. For this reason, the second chapter analyses different transnational criminal organizations around the world, trying to understand what is the role of women in each one and how their level of involvement is conditioned by the social, economic and cultural setting and if and how it has changed over the time. The results of the research reveals the impossibility to refer to “the role of women in criminality” as an homogenous phenomenon and that the imagery related to this world is still dominated by stereotypes and prejudices that prevents from fully understanding gender and criminality question in its many and wide facets. The third chapter deals with the Italian mafia-type criminal organizations, from Sicilian mafia to ‘Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita. Also in this case, a review of the main features of each association and of the internal and external social, economic and cultural dynamics is essential to define how women have increasingly emerged in the various groups, albeit in different ways according to the internal structure of the associations and to the surrounding context. Over time, female involvement, first hidden by authorities and media narrations, has become always more evident in public discourses, partially reducing the stereotypical and succumbing imagery of women that dominated Italian public opinion until then. Finally, a more deep investigation has been concentrated on the Neapolitan Camorra group that, compared to other mafia-type organizations, is distinguished by the presence of female figures who have reached the highest positions and have caused radical changes in the perception of the role of women both in the organization and in the society as a whole. Although today the role of women in criminal groups have been brought to light by theoretical researches and empirical evidences, much still needs to be done to achieve an effective gender-based approach in researches, laws and policies to prevent and combat organized crime. The stereotypes that still dominate these discourses prevent the full eradication of this pervasive and constantly changing phenomenon, which threatens contemporary society at all levels, and requires an integrated approach and the collaborations of all actors from national to international level.