Marketing algorithms prevent many women from seeing the advertising, even though it’s illegal to target jobs to one gender.

Women see fewer advertisements about entering into science and technology professions than men do. But it’s not because companies are preferentially targeting men—rather it appears to result from the economics of ad sales. […]

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Authors: Dina Fine Maron

Originally published on Scientific American.

Photo credit: Getty Images as posted on the Scientific American website.

An examination of the prosecution and maintenance histories of approximately 2.7 million US patent applications indicates that women have less favorable outcomes than men.

Full article available here.

Authors: Jyle Jensen, Balazs Kovacs and Olav Sorenson

Published by Nature Biotechnology

Full citation: Jensen, K., Kovács, B. & Sorenson, O. Gender differences in obtaining and maintaining patent rights. Nat Biotechnol 36, 307–309 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4120

Innovation is essential for economic growth, prosperity and social progress. However, there is strong evidence of persistent inequality and exclusion of women in the US innovation economy. We develop a framework to map the inventor (patentee) gender gap and identify contexts and catalysts for inclusion. Our approach has three main goals: First, to build inventor inclusivity metrics that capture the presence of women in the flow of new inventors, allowing comparisons across regions, organizations, and individuals. Second, to identify the overall gap between the rate of female new STEM graduates and the rate of female new inventors, emphasizing that the inventor gender gap is more than a supply problem. Third, to understand the variation in inventor inclusivity across top patenting regions, organizations and individuals, providing a window into policy and regional and organizational catalysts for change. […]

Full article available here.

Authors: Mercedes Delgado & Fiona Murray

Published by University of Chicago Press

Full citation: Mercedes Delgado and Fiona Murray, 2021. “Mapping the Regions, Organizations and Individuals that drive Inclusion in the Innovation Economy,” in: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 1, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Allowing people to pursue their talents and interests is essential to individual well-being, but it also is a crucial part of any market economy. U.S. laws and society too often limit people from developing their potential, harming those individuals and the overall economy in the process. Policies that encourage more equal participation for women and African Americans could boost economic growth, reduce inequality, and power innovation. […]

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Authors: Lisa D. Cook

Published by Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

This report compiles existing data on women and patenting. It explores both women’s underrepresentation among patent holders and their relative success in being granted patents when they apply for them. The report identifies the technology classes that women are most likely to patent in, and examines the overall success of patents granted to women as measured by their assignment rates and citation counts. The report draws on the social science literature to identify major obstacles that women face to patenting and, based on the research findings, presents several recommendations to help to close the gender patenting gap. This report was funded by Qualcomm, Inc.

Authors: IWPR (Jessica Milli, Ph.D., Emma Williams-Baron, Meika Berlan, Jenny Xia, and Barbara Gault, Ph.D.)

Published by IWPR.

In this article, we examine the rate at which patent applications are granted as a function of the inventor’s race and gender. Empirical analysis of more than 3.9 million United States applications finds minority and women applicants are significantly less likely to secure a patent relative to the balance of inventors. Further analysis indicates that a portion of this bias is introduced during prosecution at the Patent Office, independent of the quality of the application. Mechanisms underlying these disparities are explored. The paper concludes with a discussion of our results and their interaction with patent law, innovation policy, and employment trends.

Authors: Mike Schuster, Evan Davis, Kourtney Schley, and Julie Ravenscraft

Originally published on SSRN.