International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2014, 3, 267-274 267 E-ISSN: 1929-4409/14 © 2014 Lifescience Global Mafia Women: A Study on Language and Mental Representations of Women Engaged with Mafia Members Adriano Schimmenti 1,* , Serena Giunta 2 and Girolamo Lo Verso 2 1 Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, UKE – Kore University of Enna, Italy 2 Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, Italy Abstract: For a long time, women in the Mafia were considered victims who were unaware of the activities of the men in their families. However, it has recently been demonstrated that these women may play an important role in the organisation, particularly in the transmission of Mafia values. In this study, we explored the representations of self, relationships, and the Mafia world in women engaged with Mafia members. This was done by means of in-depth interviews and computer-assisted text analysis. A cluster analysis was applied to words used by the women in the interviews. Three clusters emerged that accounted for 85% of the principal contents of the interviews. These were interpreted as “representations of family”, “representations of social relationships”, and “ideals and values”. The analysis of words included in each cluster suggested that Mafia women are deeply involved in the transmission of traditional Sicilian values to their offspring. These ideals and beliefs are deeply rooted in the Mafia organisation and they involve attributing a central role to family, religion, and honor within the Mafia culture. Findings of the study could be positively used for developing appropriate preventative and social measures that may help these women change their ideals and beliefs related to the Mafia world, thus breaking the transmission of Mafia values. Keywords: Mafia, criminal organisations, women, mental representations, qualitative analysis. The original Mafia (whose traditional Sicilian name is Cosa Nostra) emerged in Sicily in the middle of the nineteenth century as an association of criminal groups, known as “families”, that shared a common organisational structure, values and code of conduct (Lupo 2009). Family is a key word to understanding the Mafia. Family is the name of the organisation’s cells: in the Mafia world, cities are subdivided into several districts according to these cells (i.e. the families) that have “jurisdictional” powers and rights to them. When an individual joins the Mafia family, he or she can never leave it. In fact, the Mafia offers a symbolic pact to the individuals: the family will give them protection and safety, but they must be obedient, loyal, and trustworthy (Lo Verso and Lo Coco 2004). For a long time, a woman in a Mafia family was considered having a subordinate and dependent status. Society imagined Mafia women as victims who were unaware of the activities of the men in the families. Until the nineties of the past century, many scholars considered the Mafia an organisation based on “absolute masculinity” (Falcone 1992), a hidden world whose access was granted only to individuals who were able to prove a masculine strength and will. This belief was partially rooted in the Mafia’s sexist *Address correspondence to this author at Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, UKE – Kore University of Enna, Italy; Tel: 0039 3286267944; E-mail: adriano.schimmenti@unikore.it ideology (Di Maria and Lo Verso 2007; Flocca and Giunta 2003), which was extended to its wider social fabric of criminals, and which was unable to recognise the important role women actually played in the transmission of Mafia values. The outdated description of Mafia women given by Tommaso Buscetta, for example, was that of a wife who is the “toy-model of her husband” (Dino 2007): a woman who does not speak and who does not think because she is trained to keep quiet and remain in the well-defined world of domestic life (Siebert 1996). Recent studies on the Mafia from psychological and sociological and perspectives (e.g. Cottino 1999; Di Maria and Lo Verso 2007; Dino 2007; Fiore 1997; Giunta, Licari, and Lo Verso 2004; Lo Verso 1998; Lo Verso et al. 1999) have suggested that this description does not fit well with the role played by women in the Mafia. The research done on Mafia members’ children and wives who asked for psychotherapy as well as the interviews with judges who have worked on prosecutions and trials involving members of Cosa Nostra, allowed society to understand to a higher degree the Mafia organisation and the mental functioning of its members (Lo Verso and Lo Coco 2004). These studies showed that these women are often well-integrated in the Mafia world, and at the same time many of them play an integral role in the organisation, being the unofficial transmitter of Mafia culture, values, ideals, and beliefs (Di Maria and Lo Verso 2007; Fabj 1998).