Paper short abstract:

Friendship is crucial in social and cultural contexts, yet under-studied. It's vital for marginalized groups like women scientists and rare disease patients to provide care infrastructure that allows belonging, professional identity, and community support.

Paper long abstract:

Friendship appears in cultural productions from multiple eras, linked to elements such as affection, tenderness, power, alliances, or morality. Although friendship is easily recognizable in most social spaces, it is also a phenomenon that is weakly conceptualized and studied. For Romero (2015), it is the affective and informal nature of the bond that makes friendship difficult to study.

Different studies have shown the socio-political relevance of friendship in socially marginalized groups, e.g. in studies about mental health and older people, the relevance of friendship bonds in generating a sense of belonging and visibility in such groups is evident. However, the lack of theoretical and empirical studies of the concept complicates the analysis of friendship as a social phenomenon.

In this line, this communication reports the results of two studies that address friendship relationships in two marginalized groups: women scientists and patients with rare diseases. Through a study of narratives, the different conceptions of friendship constructed by the participants were analyzed, and how those conceptions can articulate new infrastructures and networks that have a positive effect on these groups. The results show that for women scientists, friendship is indispensable for generating relevance and building a positive professional self-image. For groups of patients with rare diseases, friendship relationships support complex health processes, strengthen connections with their community, and circulate vital information for decision-making. The analyses of both groups show that friendship bonds allow resistance to the situation of social disadvantage.