Publications
Publications
- June 18, 2021
- Science
Who Do We Invent for? Patents by Women Focus More on Women's Health, but Few Women Get to Invent
By: Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila and John-Paul Ferguson
Abstract
Women engage in less commercial patenting and invention than do men, which may affect what is invented. Using text analysis of all U.S. biomedical patents filed from 1976 through 2010, we found that patents with all-female inventor teams are 35% more likely than all-male teams to focus on women’s health. This effect holds over decades and across research areas. We also found that female researchers are more likely to discover female-focused ideas. These findings suggest that the inventor gender gap is partially responsible for thousands of missing female-focused inventions since 1976. More generally, our findings suggest that who benefits from innovation depends on who gets to invent.
Keywords
Innovation; Gender Bias; Health; Innovation and Invention; Research; Patents; Gender; Prejudice and Bias
Citation
Koning, Rembrand, Sampsa Samila, and John-Paul Ferguson. "Who Do We Invent for? Patents by Women Focus More on Women's Health, but Few Women Get to Invent." Science 372, no. 6548 (June 18, 2021): 1345–1348.
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