A Quebec copy writer found work income doubled after she took a man's name. (CBC)

A well-known Quebec blogger has revealed she's actually a woman who took a male name because she suspected it would be better for her web-development and copywriting business.

Her decision proved correct.

James Chartrand, who operates the website Men with Pens, said that when she wrote as a woman, she struggled to get freelance jobs and found herself making less than minimum wage.

In 2006, the single-mother of two decided she needed a new start, and that included a new name — a male name. She chose the nom de plume James Chartrand, because it had a nice corporate ring to it, she said. The result was surprising, even for her.

"It was pretty much instant respect," Chartrand said in an interview Thursday with CBC Radio's As It Happens.

"[Clients] were asking questions. They were listening to my advice," she said. "They were accepting it. I was spoken to with respect, with no disparaging remarks. My income went up. My rates were not argued with and haggled with. It was quite a difference."

Chartrand, who did not reveal her real name, said her rates more than doubled and that the change could not be explained by experience or technology.

"I was still bringing in work with the other business, the one I ran under my real name," Chartrand wrote in the posting in which she outed herself. "I was still marketing it. I was still applying for jobs — sometimes for the same jobs that I applied for using my pen name.

"I landed clients and got work under both names. But it was much easier to do when I used my pen name."

Her revelation has set the blogosphere of freelance writers and web developers abuzz, with people weighing in on both sides. Some say it's old news that male writers make more than female ones; others say it's news to them.

"This may sound crazy, but until James revealed the truth about herself, it simply never occurred to me that there was a glass ceiling for freelance writers. Crazy, huh?" wrote the blogger Avid Writer, this week.

Other bloggers say Chartrand has sold out.

"By assuming the identity of a male writer, she skirted the discrimination against women entirely while doing nothing to change women's lot," wrote Jessica Wakeman, the blogger behind thefrisky.com. "She just left the glass ceiling standing there, rather than shattering it."

Yet others say it supports the argument that girl babies should be given androgynous names to avoid gender discrimination in the future.

Chartrand said she wasn't looking to create controversy; she just wanted to make the same money she saw others making.

"It wasn't done at all for any feminist reason," she said. "At the time, I was doing OK, but I wasn't bringing in much money. I wouldn't say I was out in the street, but it was hard; competition was stiff. And it was difficult to get work.

"And all of a sudden, when you are starting to be handed jobs, and nothing is argued with and the money is better, it really makes you sit back and think, 'What do I do with this?'"

Chartrand, who plans to continue working under that name, has made no apologies, saying she has followed a well-carved path of women who have commanded more respect by writing under a male nom-de-plume.

Think George Eliot, George Sand, Isak Dinesen and the Brontë sisters.

"I live in Quebec where there's always been fighting and discrimination between English and French. I've lived with this all my life," she said. "I was treated differently when I went car shopping with a male friend of mine. So, I know discrimination is there based on gender. So, for me, it was just a name."