Hegemony

I decided to do a little bit of research on the word "hegemony" after it came up in class last Tuesday. When i searched the word on Wikipedia, I got an eye-full that I didn't realize I was asking for. The whole page was based on history and hop hegemony relates to history. To those of you who already knew what hegemony was, forgive me. I then searched hegemony in literature and liked what I saw. I also understood it a bit more. The definition I got was this, "The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others." So, is it fair to say hegemony can be both a good or a bad thing? It can be good for someone who likes to be a part of the influence and is fine with going along with it, but it is not good for those that they are trying to influence? For instance, let's say that there are a group of men in some town who hang out. They expect "their women" to do everything fo them, and generally the women go along with it. This is just fine for the men, and even the ladies that do these things because it's just simply what they do. But of a women who doesn't feel that this is ok, but also lives in the tiwn, it is not ok, because the men will expect her to be like all the other women. I hope I'm understanding hegemony correctly...