Allgemeine Projekte: Frauen in Ostdeutschland

Female friendships and social change in Eastern Germany.

Laufzeit: ab 1995
Leitung: Dr. Felizitas Sagebiel

The German Re-Unification in 1989 brought a total social system changes for East Germans. The focus of the study is on East German women and research questions were:

• if friendships helped to manage changes in life in the new society and
• how friendships developed and changed together with social changes during the "Wende" 1989.

Three research areas influenced empirical study:

1. sociological and social-psychological research on friendship,
2. feminist studies on female friendships,
3. "Transformation" studies about East German women and their friendships.

27 women have been interviewed in a qualitative study.

Results:
Female friendships as research field have been neglected in sociology as well as in feminist studies with their predominantly socio-ecomomic studies.

1. Friendships were very important in the GDR but they ranged on the second place behind familiy.
2. Friendships existed mainly between women.
3. Family friendships, partnership friendships and peer-group friendships seemed to be more important than individual friendships in the GDR.
4. Most of the women didn't have contacts with people from western Germany before the "Wende".
5. Only a few women told about broken friendships because of differences on political attitudes or materialistic means.
6. Many women told about negative changes in peer-group friendships because of new materialistic values and differences.
7. Friendships based on rational choice (Zweckfreundschaften) were the ones which often have been broken during the "Wende".
8. Nearly all women told, that there was less time left in the new society to contact friends and to maintain friendships.

Veröffentlichungen

Sagebiel, Felizitas: Frauen-Freundschaften in Ostdeutschland. Veränderungsprozesse im Zusammenhang mit der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands. In: Ein bißchen feministisch? Anwendungsorientierte Sozialforschung. Festschrift für Renate Wald zum 75. Geburtstag. Leske und Budrich. Opladen 1997 (Hrsg. zusammen mit Sibylle Reinhardt und Volker Ronge). S. 159-178.

Sagebiel, Felizitas: Vom "Un"-Sinn eines geschlechtsneutralen Freundschaftsbegriffs. Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften 1997. S. 45-47.

Female friendships in Eastern Germany. Women's Worlds 99. 7th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Tromso, 20-26.6.1999. February 2000.
(http://www.skk.uit.no/WW99/papers/Sagebiel_Felizitas1.pdf)

Diplomarbeit

Vera Pohlmann: Geschlechterdifferenzen in Erwachsenenfreundschaften. Fachbereich Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Universität Wuppertal 2001