In the article prepared on the basis of the analysis of “family stories” various forms of women’s presence in the public sphere of small local communities are discussed. Principal conclusions of those analyses concern: 1) culturally conditioned tendencies to masculinize the “public” family history; 2) a necessity to take into account different forms of non formalized activities when researching women’s activity in the public sphere; 3) a need to modify research tools applied for the analysis of women’s civic activity; 4) the postulate to take into account the concept of endogenous development in social programmes concerning the activization of women.