Pamela Fishman

• Fishman challenges Lakoff's Dominance Approachassertion that asking questions reveals women's uncertainty and apprehension in communication
• Instead, Fishman views questions as a feature of interactions: women ask questions because they have power, not because they feel insecure.
• Conversational shitwork' is her iconic expression for the work that women perform to keep a conversation going (1977).
• In her paper titled 'Interaction: The Work Women Do' (1978), Fishman states that women do more conversational work than men
• She observed that:

  • The men controlled the act of recording the conversations.
  • The men decided what should be edited out.
  • In at least two cases, the men attempted to control Fishman's interpretation of the recordings.
  • The women asked nearly three times as many questions as the men. 
  • The women were more actively engaged in conversation than the men.
• Fishman concluded that women work harder than men in communication because they have less certainty of success
• Fishman claims that women have to do most or all of the work when interacting with men
• She adds that this is not down to the way women talk, it is more because men make minimal effort to adequately respond.