toxophile

It's been hinted but to make it explicit: we are in more difficult economic times than when you were hired. Maybe every new hire is getting less than back then, irrespective of gender. So, if you feel incredibly strongly about this, you as a minimum need to gather much more evidence before you can even be sure there is a problem. But you might be better just letting the people more directly concerned identify and address any problem that may exist for themselves - or are they inferior in some way that means you have to do it for them?

... and the next time someone leaves private correspondence in the open, cover it or turn it over without reading it, and tell them at your first opportunity. That way, maybe they'd pay you the same courtesy.

Advice to practice is good. Advice on HOW to practice may be useful, too.

Try summarising other people's texts - and don't just take each sentence separately and try to make it shorter, take all the ideas in the piece and experiment with reorganising them in your mind and then on the page to produce a more elegant and concise means of expressing them to your reader. Lots of the good HN writers you've noted see the short and compelling 'elevator pitch' that summarises months of work and aspiration as their greatest challenge. Politicians are always looking for the 10 word phrase that conveys the heart of their policy.

Read what you write back to yourself. Aloud. Good writing also tends to be 'performable' - no rambling subclauses to get lost in, no awkward word combinations that make the speaker (or listener, or reader) stumble and disengage. Be more Harrison Ford and less George Lucas (Han Solo said something like "You can write this stuff, George, but I can't say it")

And finally, do exactly what you've started here: Seek advice and feedback. This is a community that shares ideas, so dive in, but ask for comment on how you express them as well as their content. Grab a native speaker and check your idioms. Ask friends to point out the clunky sentences that lets down an otherwise good paragraph.

Good luck to you!