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<div>Steve Shirley was a force of nature, and also very generous with her time with historians. She demonstrated the economic advantage of not disciminating against women or people needing flexible work, lessons that unfortunately were not learned by the industry
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<div>You can find the transcript for my interview with Shirley here: </div>
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Janet</div>
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<div>Dr. Janet Abbate<br>
Professor, Science, Technology and Society<br>
Virginia Tech<br>
liberalarts.vt.edu/sts</div>
<div>Co-director, VT National Capital Region STS program</div>
<div>Author, Inventing the Internet and Recoding Gender</div>
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<div>On Sep 15, 2025, at 3:36 PM, Hicks, Mar (avg5bd) via Members <members@lists.sigcis.org> wrote:</div>
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<div dir="ltr"><span dir="ltr">Hi all,</span>
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<div dir="ltr">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<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535182/programmed-inequality/" originalsrc="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535182/programmed-inequality/" data-outlook-id="8efc13e9-c254-4cb9-9eeb-5ba958ba0daf" data-linkindex="0" style="">Programmed
Inequality</a></i>.<span id="ms-outlook-ios-cursor"></span></div>
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<div>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: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://marhicks.com/writing/Hicks-BabyAndBlackBox.pdf" originalsrc="https://marhicks.com/writing/Hicks-BabyAndBlackBox.pdf" data-outlook-id="4751edb0-92b0-47e5-9061-c1168c694fe8" data-linkindex="1" style="">https://marhicks.com/writing/Hicks-BabyAndBlackBox.pdf</a><span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr">For a 3 min summary on bsky, see here:</div>
<div dir="ltr"><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://bsky.app/profile/histoftech.bsky.social/post/3lx2veouoa22o" originalsrc="https://bsky.app/profile/histoftech.bsky.social/post/3lx2veouoa22o" data-outlook-id="016c7b53-3989-4377-bce6-18902a7464ab" data-linkindex="2" style="">https://bsky.app/profile/histoftech.bsky.social/post/3lx2veouoa22o</a><br>
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<div dir="ltr">She definitely had a long, fascinating, and important life.</div>
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<div dir="ltr">Best,</div>
<div dir="ltr">Mar </div>
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<span style="text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">________________________</span><span style="text-decoration:none;display:inline !important"></span>
<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">Mar Hicks</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">Associate Professor </span></div>
<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">School of Data Science</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">University of Virginia</span></div>
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<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;"><span dir="ltr">marhicks@virginia.edu</span></span></div>
<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;"><a href="https://marhicks.com/" originalsrc="https://marhicks.com/" data-outlook-id="2da23820-b385-41ba-bb26-47f37365fd67" data-linkindex="0" style="margin:0px">marhicks.com</a></span></div>
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<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Research Affiliate,<span> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(17, 85, 204);"><a href="https://www.mctd.ac.uk/" originalsrc="https://www.mctd.ac.uk/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.mctd.ac.uk/&source=gmail&ust=1701903187642000&usg=AOvVaw1xbBY7LJQMXL0OkuwNnTUk" data-outlook-id="bc50fa58-4594-4c3d-abe0-9fe052c5c853" data-linkindex="1" style="margin:0px">Centre
for Democracy and Technology</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">, University of Cambridge</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration: none; text-align: left; margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Member, Scholars' Council,<span> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(17, 85, 204);"><a href="https://www.c2i2.ucla.edu/" originalsrc="https://www.c2i2.ucla.edu/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.c2i2.ucla.edu/&source=gmail&ust=1701903187642000&usg=AOvVaw2XZsF6oTE-6qpBcvq5hsWp" data-outlook-id="4bbd4ff7-ab44-4750-b07d-ea8681e61dd1" data-linkindex="2" style="margin:0px">Center
for Critical Internet Inquiry</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">, UCLA</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration: none; text-align: left; margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Associate Editor,<span> </span><i><a href="https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an" originalsrc="https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an" title="https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an" data-outlook-id="d8a55e52-9e8a-407d-8745-d30024e9fdcd" data-linkindex="3">IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing</a></i> (feel free to ask me about submitting an article if you work on a topic related to computing history)</span></div>
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</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration:none;text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">Books:</span></div>
<div style="text-decoration: none; margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<div style="text-align:left;margin:0px"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(17, 85, 204);"><i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality" originalsrc="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality" target="_blank" data-outlook-id="1972bce9-5062-43da-983b-2978d60203c7" data-linkindex="4" style="margin:0px">Programmed
Inequality</a></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><i>: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing<span> </span></i>(MIT Press, 2017)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(17, 85, 204);"><i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-computer-fire" originalsrc="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-computer-fire" target="_blank" data-outlook-id="87c03515-9e1f-498e-83b8-0ce094518b05" data-linkindex="5" style="margin:0px">Your
Computer Is On Fire</a></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><i> </i> (MIT Press, 2021)</span></div>
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