Women Inventors: On the Origins of the Gender Patenting Gap

Youssouf Merouani and Faustine Perrin ()
Additional contact information
Faustine Perrin: Department of Economic History, Lund University, Postal: Department of Economic History, Lund University, Box 7083, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden

No 255, Lund Papers in Economic History from Lund University, Department of Economic History

Abstract: The gender patenting gap is well-established and is wide. Despite important progress made over the past decades, the gap remains. Why are women underrepresented in patenting activities? What are the roots of the gender patenting gap? How did the gap evolve since the ‘modern’ patenting system was established? Our knowledge of women’s contribution to innovative activities in the past is extremely scarce. We build an original dataset covering the entirety of French patents to investigate the extent to which women patented relative to men in France during the long nineteenth century and explores the factors behind the historical gender patenting gap. We find that despite the absence of scientific and technical education opportunities for women and the presence of institutional barriers, women, including those who were married, took an active part in the innovation process. The empirical analysis conducted in the paper suggests that explanations of the origins and persistence of the gender patenting gap have to be found outside of the patent system itself.

Keywords: Patent; Innovation; Gender; Women; Nineteenth Century; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 N33 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2024-01-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-lab and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/fa95edb1-3ebb-4614-9967-c4a0dc0adca4 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0255

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Lund Papers in Economic History from Lund University, Department of Economic History Department of Economic History, Lund University, Box 7083, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tobias Karlsson () and Benny Carlsson ().