Being classmates or girl friends in a Mexican high school: situated practices and gender

Abstract

The research approached female high school students to analyze the distinction they make between whom they considered to be their “companions” or “classmates”, on the one hand, or their “friends”, on the other, and the importance of this distinction for routines and activities in the school context. A methodological design was developed, based on an approach that combines sociocultural psychology and the feminist gender perspective. It included classroom observation and 15 qualitative interviews (5 to individuals and 10 to groups) with female students of the fifth and sixth semester in a public school in Mexico. The situated contexts of practice were identified, as well as the activities in which the students achieved interrelationships of companionship or friendship in which gender played a central role. It was found that while both companionship and friendship were valued positively by the students, the case of friendship implies practices with a strong empathy and intimacy that allowed them to define themselves as women, students and young people in the school environment. It is argued that, in their companionship and friendship relations, students show their abilities to achieve interrelations of respect, coexistence, support and sorority (recognition of female authority and corporal accompaniment) as young women.