title: The academic advantage: gender disparities in patenting.
abstract: We analyzed gender disparities in patenting by country, technological area, and type of assignee using the 4.6 million utility patents issued between 1976 and 2013 by the United States Patent and Trade Office (USPTO). Our analyses of fractionalized inventorships demonstrate that women's rate of patenting has increased from 2.7% of total patenting activity to 10.8% over the nearly 40-year period. Our results show that, in every technological area, female patenting is proportionally more likely to occur in academic institutions than in corporate or government environments. However, women's patents have a lower technological impact than that of men, and that gap is wider in the case of academic patents. We also provide evidence that patents to which women--and in particular academic women--contributed are associated with a higher number of International Patent Classification (IPC) codes and co-inventors than men. The policy implications of these disparities and academic setting advantages are discussed.
authors.affiliation: School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America.
authors.forename: Cassidy R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Sugimoto
authors.affiliation: School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Chaoqun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ni
authors.affiliation: University of Washington Information School, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jevin D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: West
authors.affiliation: École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, Quebec, Canada; Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies (OST), Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Larivière
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009938:Organizations; D010330:Patents as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012106:Research / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013672:Technology / Q000379:methods; D014481:United States