The roles of men and women have changed dramatically in contemporary society.  Women have gotten more freedom to express themselves and take an active part in the development of technologies, despite the fact that there are still problems in this field. People realize that gender equality is one of the components of healthy society and true development is impossible without it.  Only understanding the contribution women can make to the development of science and technology can bring positive impact on the development of the field.

At the present moment all over the world, with small exceptions, women take an active social role and demonstrate their abilities in a lot of fields. Nowadays women are active in the good production industry, natural resource management, education, as well as community management. Women occupy different positions in these spheres and professions and the spheres mentioned above are mostly considered to be female ones. A large percentage of women work in the medical industry, as well.

Despite growing technological development and popularity of feminism, women still do not possess an equal position in society.  Although women make up approximately 50% of the global population, they have access to less than half of the resources in terms of technology, financing, land, training and education, and information. A lot of specialists believe that true progress and development are not possible without women’s active participation in these processes.  The gender lens would be an essential contribution to the development of STI and would enable people to meet global changes.

History shows a lot of examples of great input made by women to the development of science and technology. The  Scientific and industrial fields, as well as other technological industries are influenced and dominated by men. Despite the fact that there are women who have played an important role in the development of the industry, their names are rarely mentioned.  For example, Ada Byron King, the daughter of the famous Lord Byron, became the first computer programmer. She also was a prominent mathematician. Unfortunately, her name is rarely mentioned in the history of the development of the computer industry and when people speak about this sphere they remember the names of famous male specialists. Earlier history also contains data about the famous female specialists in science and technology, but their names are even less remembered than Ada Byron King’s name. Hypatia, an Egyptian mathematician, made great contributions to the development of science, inventing the hydroscope and the plane astrolabe. Maria Gaetana Agnesi made a great contribution to the science through her work in differential calculus in 1700s. Sofia Kovalevskaya worked in 1800s in Russia. Her contribution to the development of astronomy and mathematics is vastly important. In recent history, it is worth mentioning Grace Hopper, a woman with a PhD in mathematics. She became one of leaders in the field of software development and made a great contribution to the development of new programming techniques. Grace Hopper became the first to recognize possible profits people could have from the use of computers and she did a lot to put her ideas into practice. She realized that making the computers easier to use would increase their popularity among ordinary people. In this way she made her contribution to the computer revolution and made computers more available.  This case illustrates not only women’s ability to achieve high results in the fields of science and technologies, it also demonstrates the way female brain works. In contrast to men, who think about complicated schemas and complex technologies, women take into account the sphere of application and use this to make technology more available for people.

Despite an unfair amount of neglect from the “higher ups” in the field of science and technology, not every great female achievement has gone unnoticed. Today, women are becoming more and more prominent in these areas and are surging forward as the world becomes more progressive.