This thesis explores how women experience their friendships with other women. The aim is to investigate the experience of female friendship through a feminist perspective and what meaning these relationships have for the women involved. To critically discuss the role it plays in their everyday lives, how norms and different power structures such as gender and class affect how women create and experience female friendships. Qualitative and semi-structured interviews with seven women were utilised to analyse how friendships are experienced. The women are all white, middle-class, between 25 and 68 years old and they have been interviewed individually. The thesis applies a phenomenological perspective and focus on the lived experience of friendship throughout both the data collection and the analysis. The thesis discusses how friendship is experienced in different stages of the participants lives, using theory about temporality and life schedules. Friendships are expected to be central relationships in some stages of our lives, but then expected to be subordinate to romantic relationships at other times. This affects the temporality of friendships, forcing it to be among our most flexible relationships. Drawing on theories of class, social and cultural capital this thesis also explores how friendship relates to surrounding power structures. These become central in the women’s understanding of who they can become friends with, how the friendship is organized, as well as the temporality of friendship. The thesis also discusses how negative friendships are experienced, and how women negotiate these relationships. How the temporality of friendship also allows for ways and strategies to end friendships.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-444186 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Sjödin, Frida |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Centrum för genusvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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