Medical innovations for women seem to be boosted by female inventors
Patents produced by research teams that include women are more likely to focus on women, a new study suggests. “We find strong correlations between female inventors and female-focused innovations,” says Sampsa Samila, the fellow who led the research with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions(opens in new window). “The effect is strongest when female researchers are in leadership positions on their teams or working in a university, suggesting women are choosing to innovate for women,” adds the associate professor of strategic management at IESE Business School(opens in new window) in Spain, part of the University of Navarre(opens in new window). “Who gets to invent seems linked to who benefits from inventions.” Samila’s team worked with colleagues at Harvard Business School(opens in new window) in the United States and McGill University(opens in new window) in Montreal, Canada. During the 24-month GEISIE project, the researchers used algorithms to analyse hundreds of thousands of medical inventions in terms of the gender of the inventors and the gender focus of the inventions. With name-matching algorithms, the team was able to predict the gender of the inventors. By using the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Text Indexer, they were able to understand the nature of the inventions, and whether it was targeting specifically female diseases and medical conditions. The size of the database, covering all patented medical innovations from 1975 to 2010, allowed the researchers to test for different kinds of correlations and to examine the share of women doing research in different patent classes over time. “We found in general there has been an increase in innovations for women that tracks the increase in female inventors, and areas that have more female inventors in leadership positions have more inventions for women,” observes Samila.
Equality to boost innovation
The researchers shared their results in: ‘Inventor Gender and the Direction of Invention’, AEA Papers and Proceedings(opens in new window). More research is needed to prove women researchers are helping tackle the problem of apparent underinvestment in diseases that most affect women. However, the correlation of 5-20 % above baseline probabilities of research teams with women producing patents that focus on women will lend arguments to organisations battling for policies to encourage female inventors. While progress is being made encouraging more girls into STEM subjects, only 11 % of inventors are women, according to the UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030(opens in new window). “Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that more equal representation among inventors would have resulted in thousands more innovations for women,” says Samila. He reassures men more equality among inventors would not mean fewer innovations for men. Prior research has found that under-representation tends to lead to less innovation overall, he points out. “Having more female inventors might well lead to more innovations overall,” notes Samila. “Labour market inequality could be creating product market inequality.”
