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by Jeanette Winterson

The story of Stephanie Shirley is inspiring, humbling, and maddening. Born Vera Buchthal, Stephanie was a Kindertransport refugee who came to the UK when she was 5 years old. Her new girls’ school in Wales didn’t teach mathematics, so Stephanie had to have special lessons at the nearby boys’ school. Later, she decided not to go to university because the only science subject she was offered was botany. Instead, Stephanie went to work at the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill, London. In the 1950s, she was building computers from scratch, and writing programmes by hand – in those days all programming was done by hand and then sent to be turned into punched tape, later to be fed, again by hand, into the computer. Stephanie was continually refused promotion – even though she studied at night school for 6 years and obtained a maths degree. In her autobiography Let It Go, she says she was sick of the sexism and the sexual harassment. She left, and founded her own company, Freelance Programmers – offering programming services to the UK Government and to large firms. Stephanie’s secret was to call herself Steve. As Stephanie, her letters were unanswered. As Steve, she got the contracts she needed. Her secret weapon was her workforce: she only hired women. Women like herself who had been passed over for promotions, fired, let go on marriage or on becoming pregnant (all perfectly legal in 1960s Britain). Her company employed more than 300 housewife programmers, all working ...