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Tough, smart and ahead of her time - how Dame Stephanie changed women's role in the tech industry

Self-made millionaire, philanthropist and technology pioneer Dame Stephanie Shirley has died aged 91.

She founded the software company Freelance Programmers in 1962, which shook up the tech industry by almost exclusively hiring women, and in later life donated almost £70m to help those with autism and to IT projects. Her pioneering and controversial decision to hire exclusively women coders and data inputters, working from home, was way ahead of its time and changed many lives. He had hoped that being in a position of power would protect his family, but as the Nazi government increased its persecution of German Jews, they fled to the Austrian capital Vienna.

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