Women, Power and Family A Study on Position of Women and hierarchy of Power in the Family

Power and its accessibility is one of the most important issues in social science. In more traditional societies, the power was an important phenomena in the family and most often it belonged to men. The occurrence of patrilineal led to the enhancement of male dominance and brought men many privileges. In this article it is tried to address some of the issues such as: - Recognition of power and its implications - Discussion of power in original thoughts - To identity an applied model to explain the relation between power and women in family arena. The methodology which is applied in this study is documentary one. In contemporary societies, gender roles in the family as discussed by functionalists (such as Parsons) is not convincing any more. Conflict and feminist theories also encounter deficiencies. Due to social changes, male domination is changing within the family sphere. And with women's involvement in the decision-making process, gender inequality in the family is going to be undermined.