Re: Gender and tech writing

Subject: Re: Gender and tech writing
From: Lisa Higgins <lisarea -at- LUCENT -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 10:59:19 +0000

At first, this is going to look off-topic, but if you continue, you
will notice that I deftly wrap it up into a perfectly topical post!

> I just read a pretty depressing statistic.
>
> In the state of Utah (where I live) women are *still* only making $0.62
> for every dollar made by men. Nationally (the U.S.), those numbers are
> a *bit* better; women are now making $0.72 for every male dollar.

I don't know about the specific study you saw, but some of the
inherent flaws of these types of things are:

* Many of them count any employed person as employed. This includes
housewives who make pom-pom animals in their spare time or stuff
envelopes or do multi-level marketing or whatever. Someone's going to
flame me for this, but before you do: I've got a man who stays home
and cooks and cleans, and I think it's a wonderful, valuable thing. I
am not disparaging the choice, but more women than men do this sort
of thing, and it brings the averages down.

* These surveys tend to compare apples and oranges. More men work in
construction and skilled labor type positions than women. These jobs
are more physically challenging and more dangerous than the clerical
and service-type jobs that are traditionally "women's work."

Now, that said: Yeah, there is some sex discrimination out there, and
some of it is endemic to tech writing. In my personal
experience, I've found that tech writing groups that are all or
largely female tend to get less money and less respect than those
groups that are somewhat evenly mixed or primarily male. When I'm
looking for work, I always ask what the writers' backgrounds are
like. All too frequently, groups that consist of mostly women
consist of 'promoted secretaries and clerical-types. Which is not
always a bad thing, of course, but when 60% of a department doesn't
have any academic background in either technology or tech writing,
it's unlikely that good tech writing is going to be recognized or
rewarded. It's also unlikely that you'll ever make a fair salary.

Most of the sexism out there is fairly subtle (and sometimes not
really sexism at all, but just ignorance about what tech writing is
and how to hire tech writers), and the simplest way to avoid that is
to work for companies that recognize and hire talented, professional
people.

Of course, if you run into overt sexism, please go get 'em. I worked
at a company once where my annual review once consisted of an
admonition to wear shorter skirts, lipstick, and perfume; and
where it was explained to me that this stupid little man who worked
under me had to make more money than I did because he had a wife to
support (never mind that I was raising a child by myself). I am still
kicking myself for being too naive, too insecure, and too stupid to
do something about it.

Lisa.
lisarea -at- lucent -dot- com




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