I'm classed as a
late pioneer of
computing, late as opposed
to early.
So you see before
you a museum piece
I follow Ada Lovelace
Surprisingly the legitimate
daughter of the mad
bad, but dangerous to
know romantic poet Lord
Byron. Her software
complemented the polymath
Babbage's hardware
back in the first half
of the nineteenth century.
She has her special Ada
Lovelace day. She also
has Google doodle
and
in December we celebrate
200 years
of her birth.
She really was the world's
first programmer,
the mother of computing
So why do so few
people choose
so few women choose
to contribute to this wonderful
technology, wonderful
industry.
At the age of
ten girls enjoy
the step
functions, your science
technology, engineering
and mathematics.
At fifteen
girls have switched off
they're just bored
and so for children and adults
it's a cultural issue nowadays
We're all aware of the
issues and we have to look
to ways to offset
unconscious bias
Let me now take you back to the
early 1960s
To get past the gender issues
of that time I
set up my own high tech
software company. One of
the first of the UK's successful
start-ups, but beware
because the older I get the
better I used to be
It was a company of women
a company for women
An early social business
People did laugh at the very
idea because you
can't sell software
At that time it was given away
free with the hardware
and they laughed even louder
at my crusade
for women.
Although women were then coming out
of the universities with decent
degrees, there was a glass
ceiling to our progress
and I'd hit that ceiling
too often.
I wanted opportunities
for women. So I recruited professionally
qualified women who'd left
the computer industry on marriage
or when they're first child was expected
and structured them into
a home working
organisation.
We pioneered the
concept of women going
back into the workforce after
a career break.
We pioneered a whole lot
of new work methods
all kinds of flexible
working job shares
profit sharing and eventually
co-ownership when I managed
to get a quarter of the company
into the hands of the staff
at no cost to anyone
but me.
For years I was the
first woman this
the only woman that
Because in those days, women
couldn't work on the stock exchange
we couldn't drive a bus
or fly an aeroplane. I couldn't
even open a bank account
without my husband's permission
My generation of women fought
the battles for the right
to work, the right to serve
and the right for equal
pay.
In my first job, when
handsome young men offered
to carry my calculating
machine for me, I used
to reply somewhat tetchily
'I believe in equal pay
and will carry my own equipment.'
Now days it's, 'Oh, how
kind. Thank you so
much.'
No one then expected very
much from woman at work
or in society
All the expectations
were about home and family
responsibilities
I couldn't accept that
and I started to challenge
the conventions of
the day. Even to the extent
of changing my name
from Stephanie to Steve
in my business development
letters, so that I could get through
that door before anyone
realised my gender.
My company, as you've heard, called
Freelance Programmers, that was
exactly what it was
Could not have started
smaller.
On my dining room table
with less than £100
in today's terms
but financed by
my own labour and by
borrowing against the family
home.
My interests were
scientific. The market
was commercial. Things
like payroll, which
I found boring.
So I found a compromise
with operations research
which had the intellectual
challenge that interested me
and the commercial value
that customers valued
Scheduling freight trains
and timetabling buses
citing oil depos
lots and lots of stock control
seemed to the be the fashion then
and gradually the work came
in.
We disguised the domestic
and part time nature
of the work force by
offering fixed prices
one of the first to do so
Who would have guessed that
the programming of the black box
flight recorder for supersonic
Concorde would have been done
by a bunch of women working
in their own homes.
All we used was a
trust-the-staff approach
and the simple telephone
We even used to ask job applicants
'Do you have access
to a telephone?' Access
An early project was to develop
software standards and
management control protocols
Software was and
still is a maddeningly
hard to pin down activity
So that was enormously valuable
We used the standards ourselves
We even paid to update
them over the years and eventually
those standards were adopted
by NATO.
Our programmers
remember only women
including gay and
transgender,
worked with pencil
and paper in developing
flowcharts defining
the task to be done.
They then wrote code
usually machine code
and sometimes in binary
which was sent by mail
to a data centre to be
punched on to cards
or paper tape, and then
repunched in order to
verify it. All this
prior to the submission
to the main frame computer
That was programming
fifty years ago.
In 1975
thirteen years from the company's start
up, equal opportunities legislation
came in in Britain and
that meant that our pro-female
policies became illegal
So as an example of
unintended consequences
we had to let the men
in.
When I started my company
of women the men said, 'How
interesting, but of course
it only works because it's small.'
Then as the company grew the same
men commented
'Yes it's sizeable
now, but of no strategic 235 00:08:20,170 --> 00:08:20,070 interest.'
Later still when the company was
valued at over $3
billion the same
people, sort of, said, 'Well
done Steve.'
You can always tell ambitious
women by the shape of our
heads, because they're
flat on top from
being patted patronisingly
We have larger feet to
stand away from the kitchen
sink.
Let me share with you two
important secrets
of success.
Surround yourself
with first class people
and people that you like
and choose your partner
very carefully
The other day when I said, 'My husband's
an angel.' A woman complained
'You're lucky.' She said
'Mine's still alive.'
People are surprised
that our marriage has lasted
so long, but I always
let him have the last
word.
So as long as it's, 'Yes dear.'
If success were easy
we'd all be millionaires
but in my case it came
in the middle of family
trauma and indeed
crisis.
Our late son Giles
was an only child
a beautiful, contented
baby.
Then at two and half
like a changeling
in a fairy story, he
lost the little speech
that he had and turned
into a wild, unmanageable
toddler.
Not the terrible twos
the bombshell diagnosis
was that he was profoundly
autistic
and he never spoke again
Giles was the firsts
resident in the first
home of the first charity
that I set up to pioneer
services for autism
Then there was a ground breaking
Prior's Court school
for pupils with autism
and also challenging behaviour. Then
an autism research charity
Whenever I found a gap in
services I tried
to help.
I like doing new
things and making
new things happen.
I've just started a three
year think tank
for autism.
But what have I done for IT
in recent years? Apart
from building my company up to
go public and employ over
8,000 people, men
and women.
I did and early virtual reality
project. Nothing as sophisticated
as we've heard about earlier, it was
how to get around the city of Nottingham
An early portal site
a digital conference
attracting 65,000
delegates from over
100 countries, some
so small that I had to get an atlas
to find out where they were.
I thought that was a first
but it turned out to be the third
ever digital conference
I'm a more than angel investor
in the digital giving magazine
recognised on the masthead
as believer in chief
I sponsor the IT Livery
Company. Number 100
nicely sounding binary, in the
city's pecking order
which is active as a professional
trade association
So more of my wealth goes back
to the industry from which
is stems. I also
founded the Oxford
Internet Institute
which focuses not
on the technology but on
the social, economic
legal, and ethical
issues of the internet
Giles died
unexpectedly seventeen
years ago now
and I have learnt to
live without him. Without
his need of
me. So philanthropy
is all that I do now.
I need never worry about
getting lost because lots
of charities would quickly
come and find me.
It's one thing to have an idea
for an enterprise, as many
of the people in this room will know
To make it then happen
demands
extraordinary energy
self-belief, and perseverance
and a 24
by 7 commitment
that borders on the
obsessive.
So it's just as well that
I'm a workaholic.
To me work is
not just something I do when I'd
rather be doing something else.
Let me finish by misquoting
George Bernard Shaw, who
was one of the founders of the London
School of Economics
'Reasonable people adapt
themselves to the world
Unreasonable people
attempt to adapt the
world to themselves
All progress therefore
depends on unreasonable
people, like me.' Thank you very much.