In most families the husband and wife are partners whose relationship is based on cooperation and mutual respect. The husband is the titular head of the family who represents it to the outside world, but within the family he customarily consults with his wife on almost all matters. Patriarchal families where the father is the undisputed head are encountered among some peasants. Ideally, the husband provides for the family and protects it from the outside world, and the wife concerns herself with keeping house and raising children. The diminution of the family's significance in rearing children has, however, fundamentally affected the role of the family in the second half of the twentieth century. As a result of the growing number of working women the roles of the husband and wife are no longer as clearly differentiated. Almost two-thirds of women aged over fifteen in 1966 were employed. Approximately three-fourths of these were married women who had assumed some of the husband's role of provider for the family. At the same time they had relinquished some of their former functions in the household and with respect to children, some of which have been taken over by husbands or by outside institutions. Social Stratification Patterns of social stratification have undergone a complete change since World War II. First, land reform immediately after the war eliminated the agricultural aristocracy and increased the number of small peasants who owned their own land. Then nationalization of industry and commerce in the late 1940s eliminated the urban propertied class. Finally, collectivization of agriculture eliminated most of the newly enlarged small peasant class. By the early 1950s the old system had been destroyed, and a new one was in the process of formation. The period of so-called socialist reconstruction of the 1950s resulted in a general leveling of social strata through the demotion of formerly privileged groups and the promotion of formerly underprivileged groups. Persons of peasant or worker origin received preferential treatment in the allocation of housing and other necessities of life that were in short supply, in the appointment to jobs, and in access to higher education. At the same time persons of middle or upper class background were deprived of their housing, removed from key jobs, and denied educational opportunities for their children through a discriminatory quota system at secondary and higher schools. A policy of equalizing incomes made little distinction between differing levels of education or skill, thus eliminating material rewards as a basis for social stratification. At the same time, however, a small group of party stalwarts, most of them of lower or middle class background, rose rapidly into the top positions of administrative and political power and became the new ruling elite.