Daniela Boccher

This article is the continuation of a previous research carried out on immigrant women forced to become street prostitutes in Italy. The research showed that, notwithstanding their violent exploitation, those women had maintained their trust in men. Such results prompted the need to understand whether the phenomenon was linked to the culture of their place of origin, which reduces women’s critical abilities of managing social trust bonds. The current study has analyzed the representations of immigrant and non-immigrant women from northern Albania to determine their convictions about and descriptions of male and female roles. Particular importance has been given to the traditional Albanian culture associated to the Kanun code. Results have been linked to those obtained by important investigations carried out by some NGOs working in Albania to promote the culture of equality between men and women.