Women's Narrated Experience of Power Structure in Family

This paper aims to achieve a deep understanding of women's described experience of the structure of power distribution in the family. The method of this research is qualitative. Data were collected by semi-structured interviews and analyzed by life story analysis. We used purposeful sampling and our technique of sampling is theoretical saturation. We interviewed 25 employed and 25 unemployed women. Theoretical framework of this research is based on the theory of Blood and Wolfe which argues that the distribution of power in family is affected by a) the availability of resources and b) normative expectations from wife and husband; in other words, more resources means that each person will have more power.
The results of this research show that there are three patterns of family decision making: woman-dominant, man-dominant and agreement in two categories of families. Although employed women have more resource and money, they cannot be influential in the making decisions. Both employed and unemployed women are dominant in micro and low-cost decisions and are less powerful in making huge and high-cost decisions. Women in both groups were flexible towards men's authoritarianism and sacrifice their wants for "saving their family lives".