The question of the mafia-style sub-culture role in female subordination. Traditional culture, religion and gender role representation in both emigrated and non-emigrated Albanian women

This article considers a specific question about the relationship between culture, religion and psychology, in fact it studies the relationship among the religion, the Mafia sub-culture and the condition of women, in relation to current questions of international politics that witness strong connections between religion, mafia and terrorism, which are reciprocally involved in the dehumanizing traffic of women. It presents the first results of a field research study, which is still under way, by analysing one specific aspect, that inherent in emigrated and non-emigrated Albanian women’s representations of the man and the idea of the family and female social roles. The subjects were 32 Albanian women: 16 were resident in Italy and 16 in Albania. The women underwent a semi-structured interview in their mother-tongue; their answers underwent qualitative-quantitative content analysis (Analysis of Lexical Correspondences [ALC], with Spad-T programme). Substantial differences emerge between the women living in cities and those living in rural areas: the former do not emigrate and are aware of their social duties, combining working life perspectives with needs for affective realisation through the creation of a family. The latter, more easily compelled to emigration, see in the creation of a family under a male guide their main universe of realisation, in observance of the Kanun (the traditional normative code, which has now been nominally superseded by the current Albanian social laws).