Book excerpt: Few people know that women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing in both the United States and Britain; programming in postwar years was considered woman's work (perhaps in contrast to the more manly task of building the computers themselves). This BIT offers a chapter in this untold history of women and computing, describing women's career stratagems in academic computing—recounting both the obstacles female scholars have faced and their resourceful strategies for gaining credentials and finding alternative ladders to visibility and career advancement.