Written by: MARY DEELSNYDER

There’s much work to do when it comes to equality between the genders in the workplace. However, I like to think about how far we’ve come, especially during this time of year, when we tend to reflect on what we’re grateful for. Working women before us had so many barriers to overcome and thanks to a few braves ones, I enjoy — and sometimes take for granted — the opportunities I have today.

In the early ’60s in Great Britain, a woman couldn’t open a checking account without her husband’s permission. Around the world, women couldn’t go to work without the fear of sexual harassment on a regular basis. Have you seen MadMen? There were barriers, legal and social, preventing ambitious women from finding their place outside the home.

There were those women though, who resisted and fought against these constraints. They had the guts and tenacity to stick it to the status quo and made real changes for the rest of us.

Dame Stephanie Shirley is one of them. Dame Stephanie is the most successful tech entrepreneur you’ve never heard of. She founded a software development company in the United Kingdom in 1962 with mainly women as employees. That was unheard of at the time. She also pioneered many of the modern workplace practices that we enjoy today. The two most important, in my opinion, being flexible work schedules and employee shareholder options.

She started her company in her dining room with the mission to help women get jobs and to avoid misogyny in the workplace. The company was called Freelance Programmers, and many, if not all, of her employees worked from home. She believed that women could have a career and be mothers without compromising productivity. What Dame Stephanie discovered in the early ’60s was that her pioneering system had a positive impact on the bottom line.

Her company was ultimately valued at $3 billion. Among many projects, her team programmed Concorde’s black box flight recorder.

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