A superficial insight into the position of women in Roman law might give an impression of a thoroughly bad situation, while in reality it was not completely so. Such conclusion would generally not be surprising, given the patriarchal and androcentric nature of Roman society of the time. Although women were never fully independent, their legal position was better than that of women from other societies in the same period, but even later periods as well. This paper focuses on three essential aspects of social life that influenced the legal status of women in society: family, marriage and tutela mulierum (guardianship over women). Conclusion that arises from analysing these aspects is that a woman's legal and social position was always dependent on another sui iuris man. However, in many ways women had relative independence in matters of property law, especially in imperial legislation and in Justinian’s law. This paper discusses the institutions of family, inheritance, marriage, dowry and tutela mulierum (guardianship over women), with an emphasis on tracking the development of women's property law status in private law (since women were completely excluded from Roman public life).