Alexa Campbell Wrote:
There are some interesting statistics in the 2001 STC Salary Survey.
The average salary for US men is $56,310 while that for women is $54,860 (US dollars). In Canada, the average salary of Canadian men is $56,580 and that of women is $52,730 (Canadian dollars). Given the state of the dollar, that
means that we are earning considerably less than our US counterparts. Is there a reason for that? What can we do about it?
Put another way, US women earn 97% of their male counterparts; Canadian women technical writers earn 93%. Is there a reason why women lag behind in Canada? What can we do about it?
In comparison to females as a whole, women technical writers do not too badly. In Canada, 1998 figures for full time workers show women earning 72 percent of men’s salaries (Canadian Statistics, Average Earnings by Sex and Work Pattern”; http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/labor01a.htm
The most recent STC Salary Survey is available at http://www.stc.org/salary.asp (need to be a member to view the salary survey)
Geoff Hart replied:
Alexa Campbell wrote concerning: 2001 STC Salary Survey: gender differences
Just a cranky editorial note: If you’re talking about men and women, the correct word is “sex”; if you’re talking about sexual roles or grammar, the word is gender.
The average salary for US men is $56,310 while that for women is $54,860 (US dollars). In Canada, the average salary of Canadian men is $56,580 and
that of women is $52,730 (Canadian dollars). Given the state of the dollar, that means that we are earning considerably less than our US counterparts.
Is there a reason for that? What can we do about it?
For one thing, the Canadian cost of living is generally much lower. Every few years, Report on Business Magazine publishes a comparison of living costs vs. salaries for various North American cities and various family situations, and whether it’s better to live here or in the U.S. varies so much you can’t make any simple generalisations. But on the whole, the benefits of moving south aren’t as great as we all tend to think around tax time. That’s particularly true in technical writing; you should see some of the angst being expressed on techwr-l by writers in Silicon Valley. As a crude generalisation, it’s my impression that working in the U.S. high-tech sector generally means living in expensive areas, and writers must be compensated enough to be able to afford housing and food; that alone would artificially inflate the U.S. salaries by an enormous amount.
Put another way, US women earn 97% of their male counterparts; Canadian women technical writers earn 93%. Is there a reason why women lag behind in Canada? What can we do about it?
You can’t compare fairly based simply on mean salaries. The only fair comparison is to compare men and women who both have X years of experience,
Y years of education or Z degrees, and who are currently working in nearly-identical positions (seniority level, responsibility, supervision, etc.) I haven’t yet seen such a comparison made for our profession. I don’t for a minute doubt that centuries of discrimination have still put considerable downwards pressure on the salaries of women, but you’ll have to do that numerical comparison I suggest to find out where the problems lie and thus, the solutions.
One pernicious problem is that technical communication still doesn’t get much respect as a profession, and this leads me to hypothesize that much of the difference lies in how management responsibilities are assigned: if a woman manages a technical writing department, she probably came up through the ranks of writers and became a manager in a newly formed department that isn’t considered all that important; conversely, I many male managers are imposed from above (e.g., from development staff) and come from positions where the job is respected and thus compensated accordingly. So these women start at a disadvantage whereas the men start with an advantage in terms of salary. But please note: this is purely speculation, supported only by anecdotal evidence and a fair bit of reading about the “glass ceiling”.
In comparison to females as a whole, women technical writers do not too badly. In Canada, 1998 figures for full time workers show women earning 72
percent of men’s salaries (Canadian Statistics, Average Earnings by Sex and Work Pattern”
To me, that’s a sign that the problem lies primarily outside our profession. There are all kinds of number games you could play to explain these figures. But again, you need better data than just mean salaries. For one thing, the mean salaries of women are artificially lowered by the fact that more women than men work in less-skilled professions (waitressing, supermarkets, clerking). You have to separate clearly the difference between lack of opportunity (why are these so few women running companies?) and unfair pay (the supermarket bag boy earns twice as much as the supermarket cashier girl), and that’s by no means easy.
