| NSF Org: |
SMA SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 13, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | April 21, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 1757344 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Mary Feeney
SMA SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | April 1, 2018 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $520,037.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $520,037.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
77 MASSACHUSETTS AVE CAMBRIDGE MA US 02139-4301 (617)253-1000 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge MA US 02139-4301 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
SciSIP-Sci of Sci Innov Policy, SCIENCE RESOURCES STATISTICS |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
This project examines the gender gap among US inventors by mapping the patenting activity of female versus male inventors (FIs vs MIs) across regions (cities, economic areas, states), sectors, and types of organizations. It is critical to understand these patterns to explain the very low presence of female inventors in today's innovation economy. This problem holds significant implications for the inclusive growth of economies. To better understand the gap, this project examines the differences in the regional context where female and male inventors operate. While prior work has explored the role of location (e.g. agglomerations of firms) on innovation, little is known about the role of location on gender-based inventor activity. The goal of this project is to fill this hole by examining key questions such as: Where are female inventors located? What locations and fields have a higher relative presence of FIs (i.e., higher inclusivity)? Within given regions what types of organizations are more inclusive? Do regional industry clusters support higher rates of FIs? How do female versus male inventors source knowledge inside their organizations and in the external environment? To answer these questions, the research develops new indicators on the geography of inventors and their patents by gender. The mapping of inventors is extended to European Union countries to aid comparability in FI inclusivity across countries, and inform policies to promote gender equality. The project also develops an inventor mapping tool that provides interactive maps and visualizations that help policy makers, firms, and researchers to understand variation across regions in the participation and performance of inventors by gender. In this way, this project can inform the design of policy initiatives (e.g., programs to mobilize inventors) to influence locational attributes and firm practices that could reduce the inventor gender gap and, ultimately, reduce the inefficiencies in the match between science and technology skills and innovation.
To address our core questions regarding the gender gap, this project develops new statistics on female inventor inclusivity (e.g., percent of inventors that are women and the percent of patents attributed to women) at the organization, field (industry cluster and technology class), and regional levels since 2000 onwards. These inclusivity indicators, together with data on STEM education and occupations, will identify what locational and organizational attributes are associated with female participation. Beyond detailed descriptive analysis and visualizations, the new data is used to assess a variety of explanations for the gender gap in patenting. First, women are not selecting STEM-based skills that are compatible with participation in patenting. Two, women in STEM are under-represented in patent-intensive fields and organizations. Third, women are more geographically constrained than men (e.g., due to lower income or family obligations), and so, they could benefit specially from being in locations and organizations where is easier to access knowledge and collaborate with nearby inventors. Overall, this work offers important policy and managerial advice to improve the inclusivity and performance of the innovation economy.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Project Outcomes Report (Award Number: 1757344)
Mapping the Inventor Gender Gap:
Analyzing Regional & Organization Variation in the Inclusivity of the Innovation Economy
Innovation is essential for economic growth, prosperity and social progress. However, there is strong evidence of persistent exclusion of women in the U.S. innovation economy. This project has developed new frameworks and indicators of female inventor inclusivity at different levels of analysis: the U.S. economy, regions, organizations (firms versus universities), and individual top inventors over time. The project has focused on the U.S. economy, but the methodology can be implemented in other countries.
The project has assessed various hypotheses regarding the gender gap in patenting: (1) women are not selecting STEM-based skills that are compatible with a gender-balanced participation in patenting; (2) universities and firms differ in their inclusivity; (3) top inventors within organizations can serve as catalysts for inclusion and (4) women are geographically constrained, affecting whom they collaborate with in patenting. Next we summarize the main findings.
1. Framework: Mapping the Regions, Organizations and Individuals that Drive Inclusion in the Innovation Economy.
We develop an empirical framework for mapping the inventor gender gap and identifying contexts that serve as catalysts for inclusion. This approach has three main goals. First, to build metrics for female inventor inclusivity that capture participation in patenting by technological field. Second, to identify the gap between the rate of female new STEM graduates and the rate of female new inventors by field in order to quantify the nature of the invention gender gap. These analyses allow for comparisons of gender participation in patenting across regions, organizations, and individuals while also accounting for different levels of female STEM talent and for the patent composition of these different contexts. Such comparisons serve our third goal: to examine the variation in inventor inclusivity across top patenting contexts recognizing that by identifying and understanding those settings with high rates of female participation, we can accelerate inclusion.
Our work shows that in the U.S. economy patenting activity is highly concentrated in a few regions and in a few organizations and a few prolific inventors within these organizations. We find that increases in gender inclusion in patenting have been slow to materialize over the past 20 years: it would take over a century to reach parity. The top 25 universities by patent count have significantly higher rates of inclusion of female new inventors than either the U.S. economy as a whole or the top 30 firms. We have shown that the participation of women in STEM Bachelors and PhDs have remained much larger than the participation of female new inventors into patents. This result holds at the national-level and for top patenting regions, firms and universities.
2. Faculty as Catalysts for Training New Inventors.
STEM PhDs are a critical source of human capital in the innovation economy. We examine whether STEM PhDs engage in patenting as students, becoming new inventors during doctoral training at leading U.S. universities. In the ongoing work, we find that 4% of STEM PhDs become new inventors while doctoral training. However, for advisees of faculty who are themselves top (prolific) inventors, this rises to about 23%. We also explore whether new inventors are equally distributed by gender. We find that in our sample, the share of female new inventors in patents is 9 percentage points lower than the share of female STEM PhDs. Various mechanisms explain this gap. First, female PhDs are less likely to be trained by top inventor faculty advisors than male PhDs. Second, female PhDs have a lower probability of becoming a new inventor relative to male counterparts. Importantly, we find that male and female top inventors have similar rates of transforming their female advisees into new inventors at about 5-8 percentage points lower than for male advisees.
3. The Role of Location in the Inventor Gender Gap.
Finally, we focus on the role of geographical frictions in the inventor gender gap. Women have been shown to be more geographically constrained than men. We hypothesize that these constraints might affect female inventors’ patenting. In particular, we expect female inventors will be more collocated with the team of co-inventors in a patent. A first result of the ongoing work is that the share of patents involving co-inventors from multiple U.S. locations has increased significantly over time. Thus, the opportunity to collaborate with far away co-inventors is increasingly key for the quantity and quality of patents. Second, we show that multi-location patents are disproportionately male patents. Third, we find that female inventors are more collocated with the patent team than male inventors. Fourth, we show that the gender gap in team collocation varies with the age of inventors. The gap is larger when women are at risk of having young children.
Last Modified: 04/22/2022
Modified by: Fiona Murray
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