Women public prosecutors working in the antimafia sector. Challenges within a high demand context

This article explores the gendered dynamics shaping the professional trajectories of women Public Prosecutors in Italy’s antimafia sector – a domain marked by institutional prestige, high workload intensity, and protective constraints. Drawing on gender-disaggregated statistics from the Consiglio superiore della magistratura and qualitative interviews with eleven women magistrates across generations and offices, the study starts by tracing the historical background of women’s admission to the Italian judiciary and by revealing persistent patterns of vertical and horizontal segregation – despite the feminization process undertaken by the profession in the last three decades. It, then, discusses women’s engagement in the antimafia sector, namely in the Public Prosecutors offices dealing specifically with organized crime – including Direzioni Distrettuali Antimafia (DDA), at local level, and Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Antiterrorismo (DNNA), at central level. Finally, the article focuses on the process of professionalisation of women Antimafia Public Prosecutors and the implications of some specific characteristics of the job – for example, having protection – on their everyday life.