Female Friendship as an act of resistance against gender inequality
A blog by Syeda Hanifa Ali, Young Expert at GHRH
For many women, existing is a political act as they navigate the daily occurrences of patriarchy in both the public and private spheres. An intersectional lens further highlights that this burden is doubled for women who face racial and class inequality. In these often-hidden battles, women find themselves carrying an unwanted weight which goes unrecognised in both the family and work sphere. Female Friendship has become an alternate sphere created by women to retrieve back to in hard times or can be somewhere to turn to when looking for joy. The ability for women to create bonds with one another to offer love and a place to feel heard cannot go underappreciated. Understanding these friendships as an act of resistance allows it to be viewed through a political lens, one which reveals to us its significant role in articulating inequality and offering tools to overcome it.
In my own life, female friendship has been an unmentioned tool I use to navigate and, at times, resist the complexities of the worlds I encounter. It’s a space which I return to when I need to recharge or share the burdens I have been carrying. My friends and I often find ourselves in coffee shops and restaurants throughout London, debriefing about our weeks. Through humour and the feeling of being heard, we find ourselves recharging, ready to face another week. This sphere, which we women create for ourselves, has many functions. In our happy moments, this is a space in which we turn to celebrate. In our hard times, it’s a space we come running to escape and hide for a few hours. This informal space is also essential for our self-discovery and belonging.
In this blog, I am going to explore female friendship as a political act of resistance against the gender inequality women face. I will be adopting an intersectional lens to understand how women facing complex experiences of inequality create spaces to survive and be heard. I will use interviews I conducted during my time at the Global Women’s Narrative Project, an NGO using the tool of storytelling to share women’s lived experiences with policymakers, lawyers, and human rights activists to effect change. I will also draw on interviews from my undergraduate research on the migration experiences of Bengali women to the UK, to reveal how the intimate relationships of friendship deserve to be studied as a demonstration of female agency. Bell Hooks argued friendship is often where we experience our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community.[1] I will highlight how this community, which she is referencing, is a community women lean upon to survive the unfair systems they encounter.
Female Friendship as an Alternate Form of Justice
Justice has often been articulated as recognition from formal systems like the law, however, many women, due to economic barriers, are unable to access this. Afrin Ali, a 61-year-old Bengali woman, shared with me the difficulties she faced navigating a mentally and physically abusive marriage, which finally broke down after a series of arguments over money.[2] Afrin never mentioned this abusive situation to anyone outside her trusted ones due to fear of being shamed or talked about. She was also unable to demand formal justice due to economic stress; this proved to be a source of hurt. I wanted him at that time to go to jail. I wanted that. No one did anything for me, in this country, I am not going to get any justice. Afrin represents the experience of many female migrants who were unable to access formal avenues of justice due to a lack of understanding of the systems or limited economic means. However, despite not gaining formal justice, female friendship became an alternate avenue women resorted to for justice as they confided in one another. In the case of Afrin, I noticed her friends were important in providing support; she mentioned when my friends call me, they say, what can you do, we know who you are, if he didn’t understand, what can you do? Her friends saying, we know who you are offers Afrin a reminder that she was not in the wrong and that the hurt she suffered was recognised. For many women like Afrin, this recognition of hurt became an informal mechanism for achieving a sense of justice which has otherwise been denied to them.
Respite from Hardship
Female friendship offers women respite from the patriarchal worlds in which they navigate and the limited space to discuss the burdens which such systems force them to carry. Being around friends for women offers the opportunity to recharge and share feelings which otherwise get concealed due to their experiences not being seen as a priority within the family structure. Cathy, who I interviewed with GWNP about her experiences during the ‘Troubles’ in Belfast, recounted fondly the place friendship held in her life. I have very few friends, but the friends I have, I’ve had for a long, long time. So, I’ve been through thick and thin, through marriages and divorces and babies and losing babies and grandchildren. And so, we've been friends a long, long time. Here, Cathy is highlighting that her small circle of friends has supported one another through significant life changes and created a space they can turn to in difficult times. Being able to share the pain of losing babies and divorce is significant as it highlights how friendship likely offers empathy in a way they would not experience elsewhere.
In other cases, female friendship not only offered emotional support but proved to be a lifeline by stepping in when needed. Many women carry the heavy domestic burdens of the private sphere with limited support, and when they are unable for external reasons to meet these demands, it makes their situation hard to manage. For example, Lily Chowdhury, when she broke her leg during Ramadan (a month of fasting many Muslims practise), found herself in a stressful situation as there was no one to make Iftar (meal after sunset) and Sehri (meal before sunrise), the only meals consumed in the day. She said for the fifteen days she was injured, her female friends had organised to make the meals for her family, for the last 15 days of Ramadan, one person would make me sehri and another iftar that’s how good my relationship with them is I will never forget that my table was filled with food. This is a clear demonstration of how friends turn up for one another, making difficult moments easier. It also highlights an understanding of the help needed, the awareness that cooking would be a worry for Lily highlights the intimate understanding women hold for each other’s situation. In this case, friendship can be viewed as a resistance, not in the sense of breaking down the unequal systems but through providing a means of making the burden less heavy.
Spaces of Joy
Many women who battle with the unequal systems of patriarchy and racism are, at times, only defined as victims. This perception writes out the joy that these women carve out for themselves to resist their unequal position. Shardé Davis, in her study on sistah circles, which are spaces for black women to create with one another, highlights how many escape the exclusionary practices of the dominant social world and retreat to these localised communities to relax and empower themselves.[3] In these circles, Davis notes that humour and laughter are invaluable tools to cope with stressful situations as they function to undermine racist/sexist social structures and regain power. In my interview with Afrin, the joy that she found in retreating to her friends after leaving her abusive marriage highlights that joy deserves to be understood as a form of resisting unequal systems of power. She notes I had such amazing friendships. People would come to my house at midnight and leave around 5 a.m. When I asked if she felt a sense of freedom from these interactions, she explained that when my husband lived with me, my siblings, and my cousins, no one would come to my house. He wouldn’t like it. This suggests that what at first glance looks like women gathering and having fun into the late hours, for Afrin, it was something more, it was a demonstration of freedom and the ability to live without the opinion of someone else. As Davis mentions, friendship through tools like joy becomes a means of restoring power to women who have experienced the brunt of social injustice.
Conclusion
Female friendship should therefore be understood as a tool women use to navigate the complex experiences of inequality they encounter. It becomes an essential space they return to at various points in their lives and offers them what they need at the time. For many women, friendship through, being heard, acts as a sphere of justice which is denied to them elsewhere. In other cases, it is a respite from heavy domestic duties, and for many, it is a sphere of joy where laughter itself becomes a means to resist unequal power dynamics. This unconventional space of resistance deserves to be given attention as it displays the complex agency of women.
[1] Bell Hooks Books, ‘The Power of Friendship Among Black Women: A Source of Strength and Solidarity.’ https://bellhooksbooks.com/articles/i-see-you-girl-why-black-womens-friendships-matter/
[2] I have changed the name of the original woman I interviewed to keep her anonymous.
[3] Shardè M. Davis, When sistahs support sistahs: A process of supportive communication about racial microaggressions among Black women, Communication Monographs, 86, p.133-157