Women and the Profession of Technical Writing

Abstract

In the United States, the majority of technical writers and technical writing teachers are women. Their dominance of the profession has several causes, including the attractiveness of writing jobs for women, widespread associations of women and superior writing ability, the social acceptability of women in writing jobs, and occupational segregation. Women's dominance of the profession brings with it the risk of diminishing wages and prestige. To avoid this depreciation of the field, professional associations ought to equip technical writers and technical writing teachers with information regarding satisfactory salaries and working conditions, and teachers ought to communicate this information to their students.

Can This Marriage Be Saved: Is an English Department a Good Home for Technical Communication?

“…The slightly larger number of males in our study seems at odds with the distribution reported for technical writers in the workplace where women outnumber men. For example, in 1992, 62 percent of practitioners were women [24]. Similarly, in a 1995 survey of job satisfaction among members of the Society for Technical Communication, 61 percent of the respondents were women [25].…”

“…Similarly, in a 1995 survey of job satisfaction among members of the Society for Technical Communication, 61 percent of the respondents were women [25]. As researchers in this area have noticed, the recent higher proportion of women among practitioners represents a change from the early days of professional writing when men dominated the field [14,15,24,[26][27][28].…”

“…Because our survey was limited to full-time professors and we did not ask respondents to indicate their rank or pay, we cannot shed any direct light on this issue. Certainly lower pay for professional writers in the workplace has been associated with the increase in the percentage of women practitioners [24,28]. Dragga [24] and Stoner [28] also claim that the increase in the percentage of women among practitioners has resulted in a lack of respect and prestige for the field.…”

“…Certainly lower pay for professional writers in the workplace has been associated with the increase in the percentage of women practitioners [24,28]. Dragga [24] and Stoner [28] also claim that the increase in the percentage of women among practitioners has resulted in a lack of respect and prestige for the field. As one can see, more research is needed into the sexual politics and the implications for rank, pay, and working conditions for professional writing faculty.…”

Kineticharts: Augmenting Affective Expressiveness of Charts in Data Stories with Animation Design

“…In recent years, more and more arguments, reflections, and critiques have been proposed. For example, Dragga [25] responded to the chart junk debate by arguing that although pictographs are statistically redundant, they are not emotionally redundant. Kennedy et al [39] thought that the binary view of emotion and reason has viewed emotion as irrational and has made emotion intentionally undervalued in data science for a long time.…”