IP gender gap

Julio Raffo, Head of the Innovation Economy Section of the Department for Economics and Data Analytics at WIPO, and Elodie Carpentier, a WIPO postdoc research fellow, in Sept 2022 appeared on the podcast AUTM-in-the-air, a weekly podcast that brings conversations about the impact of research commercialization and the patent and licensing professionals, innovators, entrepreneurs, and tech transfer leaders who make it happen.

The podcast discussed WIPO’s diverse range of projects, what their research has shown about the impacts of war, COVID, and climate change on the evolution of innovation, and what WIPO is doing to hasten the pace of the slowly closing gender gap in the innovation space.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Authors Elodie Carpentier and Julio Raffo published a 2023 report as part of the WIPO Development Studies, in collaboration with Invent Together, titled “The Global Gender Gap in Innovation and Creativity” in an international comparison of the gender gap in global patenting over the last two decades.

This report analyzes women’s participation in international patent applications between 1999 and 2020 and finds that women are involved in only 23% of all applications, representing 13% of all inventors listed. Women’s participation in patenting varies across regions, sectors, and industries, with higher representation in biotechnology, food chemistry, and pharmaceuticals, and lower in mechanical engineering. Women inventors are more prevalent in academia than in the private sector, and typically work in mostly-male teams or alone. Achieving gender parity will require significant effort, with an estimated target year of 2061 based on current trends.

Click here for the full report.

Invent Together, an alliance focused on broadening participation in inventing and patenting, published a new study in April 2024 titled “The Role of Trust in Advancing Equity in Innovation.” The study highlighted trust as a pivotal factor in an individual’s decision to pursue a patent for a new product or technology. The study identified significant trust gaps among women and people of color, which deter their participation in inventing and patenting. The study deepens our understanding of the barriers to equity in innovation and underscores the urgent need to build trust within the innovation ecosystem to safeguard U.S. global technology leadership.

Click here for the official press release and full study.

In 2022, the European Patent Office (EPO) released this study providing evidence and insights on gender and patenting across Europe. The study reveals that just 13.2% of inventors in Europe are women. While the percentage has been steadily rising, there is clearly still work to be done to close the patenting gender gap.

This report presents data regarding gender and patenting across a wide range of countries, for different time periods, patent application profiles, and in different technology fields. The report indicates that the gender gap in relation to patenting could be harming technological progress, for European societies as a whole, given that the ingenuity of all people is not being fully leveraged. It recommends that policymakers enact policies and programs to close the gap and increase access to patents for female inventors.

Click here to read the report.

New research from WIPO about gender representation on PCT applications reveals that China has been able to grow the quantity of women inventors at nearly double the rate of the U.S. in recent decades, with 42% female inventors in China compared to 22% in the U.S. This Fortune article from Holly Fechner, the Executive Director of Invent Together, highlights the importance of utilizing the ideas and ingenuity of female inventors as well as those from other historically underrepresented groups, especially since global competition in technology is so intense and thus the stakes are high.

Click here to read the full article.

This insightful article from LINE Publication features Laurie Self and Holly Fechner as they highlight the progress that is being made to make the patent system as accessible as possible.

Less than 13% of all inventors listed on U.S. patents are women and Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiracial Americans account for even less at only 8% of all U.S. inventors. Qualcomm and Invent Together are partnering to try and tackle this inequality, as well as signifying the importance of universities, non-profits and other stakeholders in understanding the diversity gaps and helping to close them.

Click here to read the article

The United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) undertook a randomized control trial to assess the value that could be provided by increasing guidance and information for inventors, especially women, about patents.

Women are more likely to enter the patent system through small and micro entities, which do not have legal patent support or advice, therefore providing additional guidance can aid women in patenting their inventions, subsequently closing the gender gap in patenting. The Pro Se Pilot Examination Unit was able to increase all women’s likelihood of receiving a patent by 16.8 percentage points.

Click here to read more.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today released a new report, titled “Where are U.S. women patentees? Assessing three decades of growth.” The report examines women’s patenting by U.S. counties from 1990 through 2019. Over that 30-year period, women inventors patented in 411 new counties, an increase of 32% in the number of counties where women patent.

Inclusive innovation ecosystems are a priority for Innovation Council. It is for this reason that we have collaborated with WIPO and Invent Together on preparing these high-level policy panels that will take place on May 31 and June 1.

The event will focus on the importance of designing policies addressing the IP gender gap and engaging women’s participation in the innovation ecosystems of the European region.

Click here for online registration.