Women scientists lag far behind men in patents, study says
Women scientists apply for patents at a fraction of the rate of men, potentially costing the US billions of dollars' worth of commercial development of their inventions, according to a study spanning three decades.
Women, hindered by a lack of contact with industry decision-makers, are about 40 percent as likely as their male peers to apply for patents, said the study, published today by the journal Science. It covered 4,227 biological scientists working at US universities between 1967 and 1995.
The findings represent an exception to the trend of shrinking gender gaps elsewhere in scientific research, and suggest that university technology offices could take a more active role in helping women researchers, said an author of the study, Harvard Business School professor Toby Stuart.
``From the national interest policy, anything that you would ever say about the benefits of diversity, you would say it in spades here," Stuart said in an interview.
US universities reported nearly $1.4 billion in patent licensing income in 2004, and royalties on product sales of $1.1 billion, Association of University Technology Managers said in its most recent annual report.
Fewer than 6 percent of the 903 women in the randomly assembled study sample held patents as of the last year of the data, according to the report by researchers from Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley.
By comparison, 13 percent of the 3,324 male scientists included in the study were listed on patents, the report said.
Also, the 431 men accumulated 1,286 patents, while the 51 women produced only 92 patents, it said.
The US Patent and Trademark Office reported issuing 143,806 patents in 2005. US universities obtained 3,680 patents in 2004, said the Association of University Technology Managers in Northbrook, Ill.
Patents leave some university researchers ``extraordinarily wealthy," Stuart said.
Interviews showed women scientists increasingly realize the benefit of seeking patents, yet remain hindered by their lack of personal connections to those in industry who make decisions about the patents' commercial viability, Stuart said.
``The reputation and connections with industry of the inventors certainly play some part in that evaluation" of which patents are worth pursuing, said Lita Nelsen, director of MIT's Technology Licensing Office .
