From a very early age Muslim girls are taught that their role as a female is to assist their mother with household chores and to serve the men. While her male siblings, who spend most of their time playing and walking around the village, are not expected to work around the house (Bringa 106). Muslim boys were given privileges because they were male.

Muslim women usually did not leave the household for employment because they maintained the household agriculture, however they could sew and knit for other villagers. Women's work mainly consisted of tending to the garden where they grew the vegetables for household consumption. The women also did the milking and the processing of cheese (Bringa 52-4). The busiest part of a Muslim woman's day was in the morning when she did the cooking and the cleaning. A women's daily routine, which includes social calls to her neighbors, know as "coffee visits",

Life in Naples is focused on the mother. Thomas Belmonte wrote, the mother "is at the center because she controls and distributes the twin sources of human vitality, food and love" (89). The mother safeguards her children from hunger, the cold and dirt by providing food, warmth and cleanliness. She is also ready to protect her children from anything and everything, weather the neighborhood bully or any adult. In the children's eyes the mother is always number one and her love is viewed as an eternal constant (Belmonte 90).

Women determine and maintain the environment that exists within the household while the men are the providers of material substance (Bringa 86).

"women were not the docile wives of Italian myth. They did not stand by silently, a few paces behind their husbands, ready unconditionally to serve. They were not shut away from the world, in the isolated darkness of their homes. They were defiant women, ready to challenge any man's decisions if they judged them unwise" (92).

Some common words found in the essay are:
Thomas Belmonte, , Tone Bringa, Itlay Bosnian, Re Naples, Life Naples, coffee visits, bosnian village dolina, fontana del re, del re, bosnian village, fontana del, belmonte 90, village dolina,
Approximate Word count = 686
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)