Women’s participation in inventive activity

This study examines women's participation in patenting activity at the EPO in the 38 contracting states to the European Patent Convention (EPC). The analysis focuses on all European patent applications submitted between 1978 and 2019, with occasional extensions until 2021, where possible. Using disambiguated inventor data and attributing gender to individual inventors based on their names, the analysis provides evidence on the presence of women inventors across different countries, time periods, technology fields and patent applicant profiles.