Inventor gender gap partially responsible for many missing female-focused inventions
Jul 7 2021
Necessity is the father of invention, but where is its mother? According to a new study published in
Science, fewer women hold biomedical patents, leading to a reduced number of patented technologies designed to address problems affecting women.
While there are well-known biases that limit the number of women in science and technology, the consequences extend beyond the gender gap in the labour market, say researchers from McGill University, Harvard Business School, and the Universidad de Navarra in Barcelona. Demographic inequities in who gets to invent lead to demographic inequities in who benefits from invention.