Who do we invent for? Patents by women focus more on women’s health, but few women get to invent

Abstract

Women engage in less commercial patenting and invention than men, which may affect what is invented. Using text analysis of all US biomedical patents filed from 1976 through 2010, we find that patents with all-female inventor teams are 35% more likely to focus on women’s health than all-male teams. This effect holds over decades and across research areas. We also find 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.