If you want to learn more about women programmers in the 60s in the UK and why Stephanie Shirley had to open her own company (spoil: because women were actively push out of the field), Marie Hicks is the specialist.[0]
She wrote a book, Programmed Inequality.
She studied Shirley’s story of course, and did an interview of Shirley last year.[1]
The article “only the clothes changed: Women Operators in British Computing and Advertising, 1950–1970” from Hicks is a great start into her analysis of the period. It’s a very different history of computing and programmers that the one that was told just a few years ago.[2]
Thank you for sharing. This was a wonderful story of warmth bestowed to her by a generous but not wealthy family as a young child, and of her own grit and determination against resistance and challenge, and of giving back to others. I'm also quite astounded that married women in the UK could not open their own bank accounts without their husband's permission - in the 1960s.
This concept is called coverture. By law, upon marriage, a woman's identity merged with the husband's into a single legal entity. But in practice, all of the rights and responsibility fell to the man. Indeed the husband was also legally responsible for the misdeeds of the wife. This is because the wife was assumed to be acting under the orders of the husband, even if that were not the case.
It was, though it didn't last until the 1960s - the Married Women's Property Acts in the late 19th Century ended it.
The problem with mortgages was more quotidian sexism, I think: women weren't considered to be serious enough earners to be creditworthy for a mortgage.
That surprised me too. Googling it I don't think it was a legal requirement but down to the bank. There was one lady on a forum complaining it had happened in 89:
>Never mind the 1970s - I was refused a bank account in 1989. I was working, my (then) partner was not, yet a bank told me I needed to get him to sign on my behalf. I walked out and went elsewhere.
In 2017, a new colleague of mine from an EU country wanted to open a bank account to receive his salary. Even he had a proof of address, letter from the employer, EU passport, I, as his line manager, personally had to walk into the bank branches. Lloyds, Halifax, RBS, Natwest, HSBC kicked us out, only the 6th one decided to open one, after couple of personal visit…
Workers didn't have to drive themselves crazy being on call all night or working weekends. She actually operated a successful tech company with incredibly flexible hours!
For us you could work part-time, freelance, take a job share. You could do annualised hours, min-max hours, have a zero-hours contract (I know those contracts are very unpopular now but they did work well for us in those early days).
Which couldn't be more ok. Hacker news comes down hard on people who casually throw out their unrealistic work hours, but for some of us it's the only way we'd stay competitive. I'm 26 with 5 years development experience and frankly, not the smartest man in the world. Things don't come easy to me. I take longer than my peers to learn concepts in software and business. But where I win is in my ability to work harder than my peers and compound the knowledge I do have. Sometimes even, I am perceived as "smart" by those who haven't worked 1 on 1 with me. Watching someone learn something in a week that took you almost a month; or building a reasonably successful company without doing the 80 hour week thing kills me a little inside. But that's life. You're given some amount intellect and if you want success you will have to pay your own costs to reach success, which may or may not be as much as what your peers have to pay.
The only golden rule I follow, never expect another human to work as hard as me for something that mostly benefits me. I do not believe in shaming employees that only put in their 40 and get out. That's great, they care about different things in life. Some of them have hobbies, families, responsibilities, etc, and I respect that. But for the rest of us who have chosen personal business success as our long term goal and aren't particularly intelligent, we should not feel guilty for our 80 hour weeks. Sometimes it is just plain necessary. Stupid if it doesn't work out. But necessary if it is to work out.
Thank you for sharing your honest, unvarnished perspective. A prediction: if you do earn a ton of money and become really wealthy, lots and lots of people will think you are brilliant or even a genius.
In the mean time: how do you stay motivated to work the long hours? How do you maintain mental focus for extended durations?
Ha, I'm sure it's different for different folks but I attribute my lack of burning out (knock on wood) to caring about what I do beyond a paycheck. That and leaving town for a weekend every month or so to tune everything out and evaluate my progress really helps. I get down when I'm unsure that my time is being well spent. Re-evaluating my trajectory often does wonders to keep those emotions in check.
Something looks strange here. I thought in 1960s, coding was supposed to be women's profession - it was tedious and didn't make money - perfect example of what a sexist would expect a woman to do. Only in 1970s when some people started to strike it rich through coding, men flocked there and women in that field became ridiculed.
I suppose the thing that was peculiar at the time was that she was a female entrepreneur doing business in a male dominated industry. Women were probably seen as secretaries and in other ”supporting” roles (like coding) but ”big business” was dealt by men. Unfortunately, we’ve still not left that world behind.
I'm sure oppressed women in the kingdom or where ever gain great comfort from knowing that 50+ years ago, 10,000 miles away, women were possibly restricted in one aspect of their lives as those women are today.
No point other than that it’s easy to forget that Western “enlightenment” is a very recent development.
That’s not to equivocate bank account restrictions with being stoned for adultery. Or that we shouldn’t push for even moderate Islamic countries to adopt liberal policies towards women’s rights.
It’s just an interesting perspective on Western history that gets lost on the moral high ground.
I don’t see your point. The US was decades behind Europe in abolishing slavery. That didn’t mean it wasn’t justified to criticize the US for that delay. Also, as a practical matter, we are talking much more than a few decades behind.
Thanks for calling this out. As a fellow internet user I share your believe that we're entitled to high quality FREE journalism. If content providers wanted to get paid they should do something else. We don't care that they're trying to run a business, we're internet users and we DEMAND they give us everything for free.
