Natural and technical sciences for women in the 21st century

The paper provides information on the main national scientific and educational programmes in the USA, Germany and Great Britain, which are aimed at raising competencies and qualifications among women in technical and natural sciences. It gives data on the performance of these programmes showing their high efficiency for development of women’s intellectual potential. There is expressed concern about the increasing applied aspects of scientific knowledge and their introduction into business. The author makes a conclusion about the necessity to develop similar programmes for women in Russian with the purpose of raising competitiveness of the Russian economy.