ABSTRACT
In recognition of changes for women in business and other facets of contemporary life, the past thirty years have granted prominent attention to gender issues in almost every area of the academic curriculum. Gender issues certainly affect the contemporary workplace, but technical writing assignments have not reflected these changes. Some elements of the technical writing industry have been documented in surveys conducted by the Society for Technical Communication. Management theories, personnel research, and organizational studies frequently try to describe and accommodate these changes, but no one has considered the comprehensive effects of these changes on technical communication. A comprehensive analysis is impractical for a single article, but it is certainly worthwhile to highlight the kinds of changes we practitioners, researchers, and teachers should anticipate in technical-communication studies. This chapter presents an overview of some of these changes and their potential effects.
