Women’s Participation in PCT System Now Systematically Measured

July 7, 2017

For the first time, in 2017 the yearly review of the PCT System contains data and analysis on women’s participation in the international patent system. WIPO is now taking a structured, systematic approach to identifying and measuring the share of women filing for patents through the PCT System.

At a side event to the twenty-sixth session of the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), which took place in July this year, Carsten Fink, WIPO’s Chief Economist, stressed the United Nations system’s commitment to gender equality, as reflected in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). WIPO’s Economics and Statistics Division that he heads has been actively working on quantifying women’s participation in international patenting.

Video: Watch the discussions on measuring women’s participation in patenting at the SCP side event in full.

A problem in plain sight

The number of women (or men for that matter) listed on patent applications filed via the PCT System had previously not been measured as there is no requirement for the applicant to indicate their gender. Yet having data on women’s and men’s share in the innovation process could help us to address imbalances in the field of innovation and creativity. Such regular, reliable data could assist guide decision-makers to produce truly evidence-based policies.

Solution: the Worldwide Gender Name Dictionary

The Worldwide Gender Name Dictionary is essentially an inventory of traditionally male and female names. It was constructed using 14 different sources containing 6.2 million names used in 182 countries and covering 12 languages. WIPO created the tool with help of researcher Gema Lax Martinez, who is currently based at the University of Lausanne. Using the Dictionary, Ms. Martinez was able, with a high degree of certainty, to attribute 96% of the 9 million names of inventors and individual applicants in PCT System data to either women or men. The names are also cross-referenced with nationalities and other factors, in order to take into account national and cultural differences.

The Worldwide Gender Name Dictionary is available to the public free of charge on WIPO’s website. WIPO invites anyone interested to use and improve the tool.

What next?

The share of applications with women inventors is still quite low, not reaching one third of total applications. Looking at the current rate of increase in the number of women inventors, only in 2076, will we will reach gender balance.
Bruno Le Feuvre, Statistical Analyst, WIPO Economics and Statistics Division

Kyle Bergquist, WIPO’s Data Analyst, explained the potential for the dataset generated by using the Worldwide Gender Name Dictionary: “[thanks to this new data] my colleagues and I are like kids in a candy store – we don’t really know what to pick or where to go because it’s all amazing.” Some of the exciting new developments to come in how WIPO uses this tool include:

identifying gender in Hague and Madrid System statistics;
increasing the range of sources behind the Worldwide Gender Name Dictionary;
refining gender indicators; and
linking to different data sources.

Mr. Bergquist showed that geo-location data could visually show how countries such as China and the Republic of Korea lead other countries in terms of the share of women listed in patent applications. A close-up look reveals the variance across regions and the way that specialization can play an important role. For example, leveraging the data you can spot visually that Hartford, a U.S. city specialized in mechanical engineering, suffers from disproportionately low participation of women as compared to Boston or New York.

Find out more

Measuring women’s participation in international patenting , Gema Lax Martínez, University of Lausanne, Bruno Le Feuvre, WIPO, Economics and Statistics Division, Kyle Bergquist, WIPO, Economics and Statistics Division Geneva, July 6, 2017