Women Of Honour

The role of women in the Italian mafias has long been overlooked. So who are they? Pure and virtuous Madonnas or dangerous Godmothers? Reduced to victim status and relegated to domestic life, women serve as the mafia's respectable facade: virtuous and docile. But, as Milka Kahn and Anne Veron reveal in this absorbing book, women have always been at the heart of Italy's criminal organisations. While the men are behind bars or on the run, it is left to their wives and mothers to uphold and pass on the 'family values'. Once widowed, some push their sons to vendetta; others become mafia chiefs in their own right. Yet many also decide to risk their lives, collaborating with the authorities and renouncing mafia society in search of normality.Through first-hand accounts of submission, complicity and revolt, Women of Honour paints a complex and fascinating portrait of the women in Italy's mafias who have overcome a culture of silence to share their extraordinary stories.--

This volume brings together the practical insights and experiences of individuals and organisations working in diverse regions and contexts to combat 'crimes of honour'. Authors examine strategies of response to such manifestations of violence against women, focusing largely on 'honour killings' and interference with the right to choice in marriage, and the related use and legal treatment of the defence of 'honour' and 'provocation' in different countries of Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. This timely volume is distinctive in approach and content, highlighting activist and practice-orientated academic perspectives from both the South and the North. The authors give voice to the struggle to locate 'crimes of honour' firmly within the international framework of violence against women and human rights, rather than positioning these abuses as specific to particular cultures or communities. The first of its kind, this book serves as a resource in addressing 'honour crimes' and, more broadly, violence against women, and will be of interest to a multi-disciplinary academic audience as well as to lawyers, policy-makers and activists.

This book examines violence against women in the name of honor in Iraqi Kurdistan, taking an intersectional perspective. It reveals the links between destructive, state-sanctioned honor discourse and notions of manhood as they are shaped by a resistance culture dedicated to the struggle against ethnic oppression.

Things are going well for Molly, especially her new restaurant delivery service. All she needs now is a good man who will love her and help her make a happy family. But for some reason, she keeps getting involved with the wrong men. After finding out the man she is dating is married, she is accosted by his angry brother-in-law, Richard. Fed up, Molly decides to cut her losses and focus on her work, only to run into Richard again at her next catering gig!

Why are honour killings and honour-related violence (HRV) so important to understand? What do such crimes represent? And how does HRV fit in with Western views and perceptions of Islam? This distinctively comparative collection examines the concept of HRV against women in general and Muslim women in particular. The issue of HRV has become a sensitive subject in many South Asian and Middle Eastern countries and it has received the growing attention of the media, human rights groups and academics around the globe. However, the issue has yet to receive detailed academic study in the United Kingdom, particularly in terms of both legal and sociological research. This collection sets out the theoretical and ethical parameters of the study of HRV in order to address this intellectual vacuum in a socio-legal context. The key objectives of this book are: to construct, and to develop further, a theory of HRV; to rationalise and characterise the different forms of HRV; to investigate the role of religion, race and class in society within this context, in particular, the role of Islam; to scrutinise the role of the civil/criminal law/justice systems in preventing these crimes; and to inform public policy-makers of the potential policies that may be employed in combating HRV.

A unique and often shocking testimony, Honour and Shame gives access for the first time to the world of Iraqi women. Ranging from executives to illiterate housewives, the women speak with extraordinary frankness of sex and marriage, physical and mental violence, the fear of scandal, and their indoctrination into the ideology of honour and shame. Their words are frequently moving: 'We started to have problems the first day we met. He raped me in the train on our wedding day. I was 13 years old.' 'Sex is the most important thing to my husband. He always wants me to dress up in my sexiest nightgown and respond happily and willingly to all his desires...To tell you the truth, I don't care much about sex.' 'He beats me whenever he feels angry or upset. I always forgive him. I say to myself, where can I go after all?' On the basis of an in-depth study conducted over several years, the author -who herself comes from this society- builds a picture of Iraqi women's lives from birth to old age. Although the book's main focus is on Iraq, there are many thought-provoking cross-cultural comparisons between Third World women and women in Western societies.