womance

A womance is a close but non-sexual, non-romantic relationship between two or more women. It is an exceptionally tight affectional, homosocial female bonding relationship exceeding that of usual friendship, and is distinguished by a particularly high level of emotional intimacy.

The word womance is a portmanteau of the words woman and romance. The emergence of the terms bromance and womance has been seen as reflecting increased relationship-seeking as a modern behavior. Although womance is sometimes seen as the female flip side of bromance, some have seen different nuances in the social construction of the two concepts. Hammarén sees "different values assigned to male and female friendships" and a dissimilarity in the "underlying power relation between the concepts", and Winch has asserted several differences in the social construction.