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.
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:
She definitely had a long, fascinating, and important life.
Best,
Mar