The mathematician who pretended to be a man and became a millionaire with a software company

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She had to sign her first proposals as “Steve” to get her first software sales contracts. Stephanie Shirley was made a Dame in 2000. Seven years later, she was awarded the ‘Order of Companions of Honor’ for her work in the field of technology. GETTY IMAGES via BBC Stephanie Shirley was for many (and for many years) just “Steve”. It was under this name that she signed hundreds of letters to lead her pioneering computer program business. After all, when she used her real name – revealing her gender – no one paid any attention to her. In the 1950s and 1960s, Shirley fought sexism, created women-only jobs, and embraced revolutionary ideas like remote work. Shirley is now 91 years old and no one ever believed she could succeed. Still, she accumulated a fortune of almost £150 million (about R$940 million). She became the first independent programmer in the world and the first tycoon in the technological world, which is so profitable today. Escape from Nazi Germany Stephanie Shirley was born in Dortmund, Germany, where she was given the name Vera Buchthal. Daughter of a Jewish judge, she had to separate from her parents in 1939, at just five years old, in the face of the growing Nazi threat. She and her sister Renata, then aged nine, took the Kindertransport train, which brought thousands of Jewish refugee children to the UK. “I grabbed my sister’s hand and she, poor thing, had to take care of me and her own problems,” Shirley told the BBC in 2019. The two sisters arrived in central England and were adopted there. They kept in touch with their parents, but Shirley says she never fully recovered her relationship with them. She recognizes that being separated from her family and fleeing Germany defined the person she became. And, instead of paralyzing her, this situation served to make her stronger. Stephanie Shirley, at the unveiling of the ‘Kindertransport’ monument on the pier in the city of Harwich, England. JOE GIDDENS/PA WIRE via BBC Standing out in mathematics Since she was a child, Stephanie Shirley has stood out for her academic performance, particularly in mathematics. She was transferred to a boys’ school, which offered more advanced mathematics classes. Upon finishing her studies, Shirley went to work at the Post Office Research School, which was a leader in the development and use of computers in the United Kingdom. It was at this time that she changed her first name to Stephanie. One of the few female employees, she helped write computer programs, which was quite unusual at the time. To prevent her suitors from being scared off, Shirley said she worked at the post office. Her hope was that they would think she sold stamps and wouldn’t compete with them. It was there that she met physicist Derek Shirley, whom she married. She then changed her last name to Shirley. She loved her work at the Post Office, but says that, there too, sexism brought her down. “My boss didn’t offer me a promotion because I was a woman,” she told the BBC in 2019. “I was completely fed up with sexism,” she recalls. “I learned to stand with my back to the wall so no one could come by and pinch my buttocks. And I learned to stay out of the way of certain people. Eventually, I gained enough and left.” Stephanie or Steve? Stephanie Shirley is considered the world’s first independent computer programmer. STEPHANIE SHIRLEY via BBC In 1962, Shirley decided to start her own computer company, Freelance Programmers. The plan didn’t seem to have much chance of working. First, because she was a woman in a world that was still controlled by men. Second, because she only had $10. She also didn’t have an office, but only the dining room in her house. And, to top it off, her idea was to sell computer programs, which at the time seemed worthless. It was the machines that were and would always be important, in the experts’ opinion. “They literally laughed at me,” she recalled in the BBC interview. “Back then, programs were offered for free, so trying to sell them was a new idea.” “They also laughed at me, especially because I was a woman. But I’m a proud person and I didn’t like that. So I was determined to survive.” And sure enough, she survived. Shirley started working hard. She wrote hundreds of letters to potential customers, trying to convince them that to really take advantage of a computer, you needed to develop programs that told machines what to do. The industry was hostile and many of her letters were ignored. Until her husband gave her an idea: what if she signed the letters with a man’s name? It was then that she adopted the pseudonym Steve Shirley. After that, the answers soon started to arrive. A company for women From day one, Stephanie Shirley promised that, whenever possible, the company would only employ women. And indeed, of its first 300 employees, 297 were women. She gave priority to those with children, as they would have difficulty finding work otherwise. Shirley allowed women to work at home to adapt more easily to the routine with children. It was a completely revolutionary decision in the 1960s. In the 1960s, the world of computing was dominated by men. GETTY IMAGES via BBC Women wrote computer programs with pencil and paper and sent them by post. The company grew exponentially and, at its peak, employed more than 4 thousand women. In 1975, with the passage of the UK Sex Discrimination Act, Shirley’s company was forced to hire men. Ironically, a company created to combat sexism in the workplace was suddenly at risk of violating a regulation that served exactly the same purpose. “That’s the way it should be,” Shirley said. “A mixed workforce is much more creative.” In the 1980s, the company was known worldwide and created programming for large corporations. Some of these creations were emblematic, such as the black box of the Concorde plane. Stephanie Shirley ran Freelance Programmers for 25 years. The company began to be listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996, under the name Xansa. That year, Shirley surprised again: she gave part of her shares to employees, who became owners of more than half of the company. Stephanie Shirley founded her own company, Freelance Programmers, in 1962. GETTY IMAGES via BBC Since the 2000s, Shirley has dedicated herself to philanthropy. A considerable portion of her time and fortune was devoted to studying autism, as her son Giles had been diagnosed with a severe form of the disorder. He died in 1998, at the age of 35. In 2000, the United Kingdom awarded Stephanie Shirley the title of “Dame” for her “services in the field of information technology”. But her closest friends still call her “Steve.” Read other stories about women who revolutionized technology Who was ‘Lady Edison’, the self-taught inventor who gained fame creating everyday objects The 3 women who changed our way of seeing the Universe The unknown story of the 6 mathematicians who programmed the 1st supercomputer

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