A comprehensive report on the women’s participation in inventive activity has been published by the European Patent Office (EPO), which analyzed patent applications submitted between 1978 and 2019 in the 38 countries contracting states to the European Patent Convention.
The report shows that the share of women inventors has increased steadily over time but is still far below parity with men inventors.
The 2019 figure for Europe is well above the Japanese data (9.5 per cent), but below the US (15 per cent). China and South Korea have much higher shares of women inventors in 2019 (26.8 and 28.3 per cent, respectively), although EPO notes that the estimates are less robust than for other countries.
Looking at the data from 2010 to 2019 for the 38 contracting states to the European Patent Convention, Latvia has the highest proportion of women inventors (30.6 percent).
The Baltic country is followed by Portugal and Croatia (26.8 and 25.8 per cent, respectively). Hungary is at the bottom of the midfield with 12.4 per cent. It is interesting to note that the same rates were also recorded in the UK and Denmark. Austria has the lowest proportion of women inventors (8 per cent), but Germany (10 per cent) is also among countries which stand at the bottom of the European ranking.
The EPO report also shows that chemistry has the highest proportion of women inventors (22.4 per cent), according to the 2010-2019 pan-European data. Within the chemistry sector, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals have the highest proportion of women inventors (over 30 per cent). By contrast, the share of women inventors is only 7.3 and 5.2 per cent in electrical and mechanical engineering, respectively.
The EPO illustrates its report with Katalin Karikó (Photo: EPO)
Interestingly, the cover of the EPO’s report features Katalin Karikó, a world-renowned Hungarian biochemist who played a crucial role in the development of the mRNA vaccine used in the treatment of Covid. She graduated from the University of Szeged, started her career at the Szeged Biological Research Centre and after her lab lost its funding in 1985, continued her career in the US.
We recently reported the Hungarian team won three bronze medals at the European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI), a competition designed to encourage more women to choose a career in the ICT sector. Women currently make up around 15 per cent of students in higher education in the IT sector.
