[SIGCIS-Members] Steve Shirley obit

[Hicks, Mar (avg5bd)]

Hi all,

Agreed—Shirley was a very interesting player in the software industry. She focused on hiring many of the women being forced out of their jobs in computing in the 1960s and onward, as I talk about in Programmed Inequality<https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535182/programmed-inequality/>.

If you’re interested in reading more about Shirley and the gender and labor dynamics at her company, a preprint of my recent chapter in Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick’s new edited collection is below. Notably, Shirley saw the broad societal importance of work from home accommodations in high tech long before most others in the industry: https://marhicks.com/writing/Hicks-BabyAndBlackBox.pdf

For a 3 min summary on bsky, see here:
https://bsky.app/profile/histoftech.bsky.social/post/3lx2veouoa22o

She definitely had a long, fascinating, and important life.

Best,
Mar

________________________
Mar Hicks
Associate Professor
School of Data Science
University of Virginia

marhicks at virginia.edu
marhicks.com<https://marhicks.com/>

Research Affiliate, Centre for Democracy and Technology<https://www.mctd.ac.uk/>, University of Cambridge
Member, Scholars' Council, Center for Critical Internet Inquiry<https://www.c2i2.ucla.edu/>, UCLA
Associate Editor, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing<https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an> (feel free to ask me about submitting an article if you work on a topic related to computing history)

Books:
Programmed Inequality<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality>: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press, 2017)
Your Computer Is On Fire<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-computer-fire>  (MIT Press, 2021)
________________________________
From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Dag Spicer via Members <members at lists.sigcis.org>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2025 12:28:59 PM
To: Jonathan Coopersmith <j-coopersmith at tamu.edu>
Cc: SIGCIS <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Steve Shirley obit

Dame Shirley was also a CHM Fellow and you can read a bit more about her here:

<https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-dame-stephanie-shirley-1933-2025/>
[2025-08-StephanieShirley-Web-1.png]
In Memoriam: Dame Stephanie Shirley, 1933–2025<https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-dame-stephanie-shirley-1933-2025/>
computerhistory.org<https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-dame-stephanie-shirley-1933-2025/>

An amazing person!

Dag
-----
Dag Spicer
Senior Curator
Computer History Museum
Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
ACM History Committee
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View CA  94043

“History is a vast early warning system.”
— Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990).

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On Sep 12, 2025, at 1:32 PM, Jonathan Coopersmith via Members <members at lists.sigcis.org> wrote:


another change agent
  https://www.economist.com/obituary/2025/09/04/steve-shirley-countered-sexism-by-founding-her-own-company


Stay sane,

Jonathan

Jonathan Coopersmith
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Professor Emeritus
Department of History
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-4236
979.739.4708 (cell)

with Arthur Daemmrich, “The Road Not (Yet) Taken.  Historians As Policy Professionals,” AHA Perspectives May 2025, 18-20.

"'What Were We Thinking?' Space Commercialization, 1960-1990,"  in Brian C. Odom, ed., The Rise of the Commercial Space Industry. Early Space Age to Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).







.

CAUTION: External email. Beware of links & attachments.

<Steve Shirley countered sexism by founding her own company.pdf>_______________________________________________
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