Lost Marie Curies: Parental Impact on the Probability of Becoming an Inventor

Karin Hoisl (), Hans Christian Kongsted () and Myriam Mariani ()
Additional contact information
Karin Hoisl: Business School, University of Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany; Department of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark; Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, 80539 Munich, Germany
Hans Christian Kongsted: Department of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Myriam Mariani: Department of Management and Technology, Bocconi University, 20136 Milan, Italy; ICRIOS (Invernizzi Center for Research on Innovation, Organization, Strategy and Entrepreneurship), Bocconi University, 20136 Milan, Italy

Management Science, 2023, vol. 69, issue 3, 1714-1738

Abstract: This research investigates the role of parents in explaining the surprisingly low presence of women among inventors despite their increase among graduates from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. With Danish registry data on the population born between 1966 and 1985 and an experimental setting crafted on siblings’ gender composition, we find that the transmission of inventorship from parents to children disfavors daughters if they have a (second-born) brother. We complement this analysis with evidence about the role of parental factors at different stages of children’s education. Overall, our results confirm that parental role models matter for children’s education, especially at early stages and, through this, increase the probability of a child’s becoming an inventor. However, the direct transmission of inventorship that favors boys much more than girls seems to be affected by gendered expectations developed by parents about daughters’ and sons’ returns from inventorship. Our study contributes to explaining who becomes an inventor and why by adding an important boundary condition to the literature: Parents are intermediaries who, based on their own interpretation of external information about inventive jobs, contribute to create or limit opportunities for their children.

Keywords: gender; inventor; family environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4432 (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:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:3:p:1714-1738

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().