Gender hierarchy: and "women's power" Individual experience in social context

The article analyses the role of gender in distribution of power in society, including not only a legitimate political authority and formally sanctioned right to make political decisions binding for others, but also a possibility to exert informal influence over people, their actions and what is going on, i.e. to influence on others for achieving his/her own aims. The author considers the expanded conception of power that is now so central for gender history and puts it in the framework of debates on relationship between the private and the public that reflects the distribution of power, prestige and property through the system of political, cultural and economic institutions. Special attention is paid to the problem of conjugal relations and to "political order" of the family. The article also considers such important aspect of women's power as their participation in the religious movements of the Middle Ages and the Reformation epoque. The author discusses the forms of political influence that were used by elite and royal women to the interests of their parental kin. The author shows how the access that these women had to hidden channels of influence and in some cases to formal authority didn't abolish the gender asymmetry that was very stable and even stimulated its reproduction.