Women Inventors: The Legacy of Medieval Guilds

Sabrina Di Addario, Michela Giorcelli and Agata Maida

No 11649, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The share of female inventors remains significantly lower than that of men in both developed and developing countries. This paper studies gender bias in patenting activity, using a unique dataset that matches Italian administrative employer-employee records both to patent data from the European Patent Office (1987-2005) and to municipality-level information on medieval guilds from the Italian Central Archive of State. We empirically verify whether women’s low propensity to patent can be explained by the historical local conception of women’s role in society, which we measure with the share of women in guild founders from the Middle Ages. The results indicate that the presence of women in Medieval guilds is associated with a higher probability of observing a female inventor and a higher number of yearly patent submissions by women.

Keywords: patents; women; inventors; guilds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-lab
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Related works:
Working Paper: Women Inventors: The Legacy of Medieval Guilds (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11649

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