In addition. the study shows that there are far fewer woman patenting in STEM technologies than there are men.<\/p>\n
Share of Patents with at Least One Female Inventor and Share of\u00a0STEM Degrees Awarded to Women, 1977-2010.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Why Women Patenting Is So Important<\/h2>\n
Most inventors come up with their inventions as a means to solving a problem they face or affected by in their every day lives. \u00a0Given that majority of inventors are men, they design their inventions with men in mind, ensuring that many women’s issues are not being accurately represented.<\/p>\n
Crash Test Dummy Example<\/strong><\/p>\nJessica Milli discussed how woman are far more likely to get injured in car crashes than are men. \u00a0Over the years, majority of all Crash Test Dummies have been male dummies. \u00a0This may not seem like it matters, but in testing these male dummies, which, to mimic real life scenarios, are taller, larger, and heavier than most female crash test dummies (and the women they represent), they do not take into account that women tend to sit more forward and do not have the same protections within a car, such as the bar between the front and back seat doors) that males often do.<\/p>\n
Knee Replacement Example<\/strong><\/p>\nJane Muir told us that the inventor of Knee Replacements created this invention to suit males such as himself. \u00a0However, the knee caps of women are physically different and as a result, have to have be adjusted (such as sawing off pieces) during surgery to ensure an accurate fit on women.<\/p>\n
Application Success of Women<\/h2>\n
Between 2000 and 2016, male primary inventors submitted more than three times as many patent applications as female primary inventors. \u00a0Once a patent application is filed though, the gender gap closes substantially. \u00a0The report states that “While patent applications with a women listed as the first inventor are accepted less often than those with a male\u00a0inventor listed first, the difference in acceptance rates is less stark than the difference in application rates. Of the patents filed between 2000 and 2016, 67.2 percent of all applications filed by women were eventually accepted compared with 73.0 percent of those filed by men.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Number of Patent Applications and Acceptance Rates by Gender of Applicant, 2000-2016<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Will There Be Patent Gender Equality Anytime Soon?<\/h2>\n
Although women represent half of the American population, as mentioned above, women are grossly underrepresented with less than 20% of all patents showing women as one of the inventors.<\/p>\n
The data does show a positive trend in the number of women patent holders, which have more than quintupled from 3.4% in 1977, to 18.8% in 2010. \u00a0However, at this rate, projections are that it won’t be until 2092 until there is equality in gender representation in patents.<\/p>\n
<\/h3>\nShare of Patents with at least One Woman Inventor and Projection to Parity<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Thursday, December 1, I attended the Innovation Alliance’s panel on Closing the Patent Gender Gap: How Increasing the Number of Women Patent Holders Can Spur U.S. Innovation and Grow the Economy. The panel, which was moderated by the Licensing Manager for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Jennifer Gottwald, Ph.D discussed the recent findings of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and their report on Equity in Innovation: Women Inventors and Patents that was released on November 29, 2016, which explores how women are “underrepresented” among patent holders as well as their relative success in being granted patents when they do apply for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[262,228,3,187],"tags":[11639,10844,11638,11634,11635,512,2765,10843,39,6728,11637,11636,33,11526,34,8749,7017,4751,8727,10841],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75211"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=75211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}