The delicate horizontality of all-women discourse requires that no single participant position themselves as the dominant authority on the topic at hand, and the questions they use align with those requirements. “Women’s avoidance of information-seeking questions seems to be related to their role in constructing a speaker as ‘someone who knows the answer,’ an expert,” Coates explains. “In friendly conversation, women avoid the role of expert and therefore avoid forms which construct asymmetry.”
