IP Watchdog: The Patent Gender Gap: Less than 20% of U.S. patents have at least one woman inventor, by Gene Quinn
This post originally appeared in IP Watchdog on August 1, 2016.
Although women have more than quintupled their representation among patent holders since 1977, a pronounced patent gender gap remains. In 2010, according to a new briefing paper by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), fewer than one in five patents had at least one woman inventor named. Although quintupling the number of women inventors over the last 30+ years is impressive, at the current growth rate it is projected that it will take until 2092 for women to reach parity in patenting.
There is a very real patent gender gap. The question is what, if a