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Although two-thirds of the WinWriters Salary Survey respondents are female, they lag their male counterparts in annual salary by an average of $4,000, or a 7% difference. Looking at hourly wage earners, women contractors earned an average of $41 per hour compared to $49 for the men. To put these numbers into perspective, it's useful to look at other salary surveys.

In the 1999 Society for Technical Communication survey, the annual salary difference between men and women was $2,000 in favor of men. According to a 1999 Computer Jobs survey, male technical writers earn $55,000 to the females' $47,000 for a difference of 15%. A look at the 1998 U.S. Census Bureau data shows that for the occupation category of "professional specialists" women earn only 69% of what men earn. (http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income98/in98ern.html)