Pamela Fishman’s Theory, Experiment and Results

Pamela Fishman conducted an experiment and involved listening to fifty-two hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American couples. Five out of the six subjects were attending graduate school; all subjects were either feminists or sympathetic to the women’s movement, were white, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Fishman listened to recordings and concentrated on two characteristics common in women’s dialect, including tag questions for example ”you know?”

Fishman begins by examining the use of tag questions being asked and states that women frequently use tag questions ‘isn’t it?’ or ‘couldn’t we?’ following a thought or suggestion. For females questions are an effective method of beginning and maintaining conversations with males. Fishman argues that women use questions to gain conversational power rather than from lack of conversational awareness. She claims that questioning is required for females when speaking with males; men often do not respond to a declarative statement or will only respond minimally.

Fishman also analyses the frequent use of the phrase ”you know” used by women. ”You know” is an attention-getting device to discover if the conversational partner is listening. When ”you know” is combined with a pause, she realized that the woman is inviting the listener to respond. When little or no response is heard from the male the pause is internalized by the speaker and she will continue the conversation. With her study she found that women in her study used four times as many yes/no and tag questions as the men. But she was adamant that this was not because women were more uncertain and tentative as Lakoff suggested but because women are the ones generally trying to keep the conversation going. Fishman therefore concludes again that women’s style of communicating is not from lack of social training, but to the inferior social position of women.

Pamela's theory states that women use more questions than men in mix sex conversations. In her study of 3 couples, women asked 2.5 times as many questions as the men. She states that lack of communication is one of the most frequent given reasons for the breakdown of marriage. In her study women asked 260 out of a total of 370 questions.

First wave of feminism

First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early 20th century. It focused on legal issues, primarily on gaining women's suffrage.
In 1800, women had little control over their lot in life. The average married female gave birth to seven children. Higher education was off-limits. Wealthier women could exercise limited authority in the domestic sphere but possessed no property rights or economic autonomy. Lower-class women toiled alongside men, but the same social and legal restrictions applied to this stratum of society as well.

The first organized movement for English feminism was the Langham Place Circle of the 1850s, which included among others Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes. The group campaigned for many women's causes, including improved female rights in employment, and education. It also pursued women's property rights through its Married Women's Property Committee.

They also together edited the ""Condition of Working Women and the Factory Acts in 1896. In the beginning of the 20th century, women's employment was still predominantly limited to factory labor and domestic work. During World War I, more women found work outside the home. As a result of the wartime experience of women in the workforce, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 opened professions and the civil service to women, and marriage was no longer a legal barrier to women working outside the home.
British suffragettes were mostly women from upper and middle-class backgrounds, frustrated by their social and economic situation. Their struggles for change within society, along with the work of such advocates for women's rights as John Stuart Mill.

Second wave Feminism

The 1960s may have brought the pill and the sexual revolution but as the 1970s dawned equality of the sexes was still a long way off. Women could be paid less than a man for doing the same job, posts were advertised by gender and 'sexual harassment' was an unknown term.
The 20th century around when the second wave started around 1960's mostly located in the United States.
Second-wave feminists challenged liberal democratic conceptions of the political. Part of this challenge involved politicising relationships. Relationships between women and men were the major target and connected to debates about in what ways sexuality was political.