This thesis draws upon the qualitative findings of 20 interviews undertaken with
female teachers in order to explore the topic of workplace friendships between
women in an all-female organisational setting. The interview data sheds light on
these friendships within the all-female workplace context, examining how the
workplace setting can influence the forms of friendship women build with one
another. This thesis explores this topic across three main areas:
1) the way in which women develop workplace friendships, and the forms that women-women
relations take in all-female workplaces;
2) the importance of workplace friendships and the meanings attached to these friendships; and
3) the blurred boundaries between family and friends, which result in unique workplace-friendship relationships.
This study contributes to current knowledge on
friendship development and, specifically, the issues associated with women’s
development of friendships within the all-female workplace context. The findings
highlight the difficulties that some women experience in creating and developing
friendships based on cultural boundaries. The findings also emphasise the
weaker utility in female friendships, which remains both unacceptable and
unchallenged yet nonetheless recognised by women. Furthermore, women are
argued to create “other-self” friends and to experience another form of suffusion
process in the workplace context. This study also contributes to the current
literature on the barriers and opportunities associated with female friendship-building by highlighting how female misogyny employed in the workplace and that workplace friendship is a surviving tool used, adopting a sociological perspective to explore and analyse the findings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19410 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Alkandari, Anwaar M. |
| Contributors | Williams, Jannine, Kelly, Simon |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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