Interview with WIPO's Intan Hamdan-Livramento, élodie Carpentier and Julio Raffo on the Patenting Gender Gap

Jean-Claude: Gender gap in patenting was already measured by other institutions, e.g. UKIPO 2016 and 2019, OECD 2018. Why do we read a WIPO report only now?

Intan: WIPO’s research work dates back to pre-2016, but the first report on gender gap in patenting was published in 2016 (See Martinez, Raffo and Saito, 2016). This latest report is an extension and improvement on the 2016 paper, with further research. In addition, the recent report includes an updated and improved World Gender Name Dictionary, which includes the possibility of using Chinese and Korean inventor names in their original characters. The latest version of the WGND can be found here.

Thanks for pointing this out! And kudos to you for including novel date on Chinese and Korean inventors in their original characters. What about Japanese inventors: Wasn't it necessary to include those with their original characters?

élodie: Japanese names in Romanized characters are less difficult to disambiguate for gender assignment.

And how much of an impact do you assess did it make to include those inventors with their names in original characters with regards to overall numbers?

élodie: Out of about 600,000 patents with Chinese and Korean inventors, we found the names of the inventors in original characters for 73% of the patents. If we had used the inventors' names in Roman characters, we would not have been able to assign a gender to the vast majority of these inventors.

In an allusion to Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi novel "2001 - a Space Odissey", I introduced your report with "2061 - a (slow) pace odissey...?" In the report, you state that "based on current trends, if the inclusion conditions of the past five years are maintained, we may observe that women inventors will reach the 50 percent target around the year 2061". Europe is even expected to reach parity only by 2088! You mentioned the respective negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in domestic workloads. Which impact would you guess does the advent of large language models artificial intelligences on AI have on WIR and the gender gap in patenting?

Julio: This is difficult to assess without having the latest figures in front of us.

Many factors have to be taken into consideration. Take for example, if salaries in certain sectors decrease because the use of AI replaces the need for those sets of skills. And more men were to move out of that sector while the women stay, then we would see a narrowing of the gender gap in patenting for that particular sector. But this narrowing might not be a positive impact overall, especially for the women, given the lower salary that they would receive for staying in the sector.

This scenario is not difficult to imagine. We see this in academia. The share of women inventors in academia tend to be higher than in the private sector. But this is not necessarily great. Wages in academic institutions tend to be lower than these women could receive if they were to be hired in the private sector at a comparable level.

The report states that Asia shows the fastest WIR growth, from lowest in the period of 2001-2005 to second highest in the period 2016-2020. Asia comprises patenting powerhouses as China, Korea and Japan, but also further countries with less patenting. Wouldn't it be more accurate to differentiate e.g. Asia even if the sub-region is defined by the UN Statistics Division?

Intan: We have not done it. But, we could do it.

How could "further research [...] to understand the societal and technological factors contributing to the gender gap in patenting and to identify effective policies and actions for promoting gender diversity in innovation" as mentioned in the report look like?

élodie: We have always mentioned that the first step in addressing the gender gap is to measure it. Now that we have measured it, we would like to understand what could account for those gender gap differences.

One of the research strands that we are examining is to determine how much sector-, country-specific, industry-, and team-specific factors (among others) could contribute to the IP gender gap worldwide.

Once we identify these factors, then we can propose policies that would address the issues.

When can we expect the update of the report?

Julio: We would like to pose the answer back to you. How often would you like the update? More generally, we do update these figures based on latest patent data yearly. You will be able to find them in our IP Data Center and World Intellectual Property Indicators report. The difference is that you may not get the in-depth analysis as we do in the report here.

But, we are working on it. Let us know how you think we can improve our reporting.

Thanks for asking. In order to increase visibility of the progresses (hopefully!), I would welcome a yearly update with an in-depth analysis as a kind of State of the Nation. Maybe to be published each year on Equal Pay Day which however differs year by year. One could call it Equal Patenting Day...?

In that sense, the readings on this year's Equal Patenting Day are sobering. Are there any other IP rights where the situation is less dire?

In addition to the Gender Gap in Patenting report, we have recently released the figures for the gender gap in industrial design to commemorate this year’s World Intellectual Property Day theme. This report will follow shortly.

We find that women account for about 21 percent of listed designers in global industrial design applications in WIPO’s Global Design Database. This translates to about 1 in five designers are women. This figure is slightly above the share of women inventors in international patenting (16 percent).  

If the current trend continues, we would reach gender parity of listed designers in global industrial design applications in 2099. This is in sharp contrast to patenting, where we estimated it would be in 2061.

Oh dear. Let's continue our conversation next year on Equal Patenting Day... Let's see how much progress you can eventually report by then. Intan, élodie, Julio, thank you very much for the interview!

About the interviewees:

Intan Hamdan-Livramento is an economist working in the Department of Economics and Data Analytics at the WIPO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. She is one of the four co-authors of WIPO’s analytical publication, World Intellectual Property Report. Intan is responsible for conducting and supervising areas of the section’s work relating to the economics of innovation and intellectual property (IP). She has published articles on issues intersecting IP, innovation and less developed economies. 

Intan received her PhD in economics from the école Polytechnique Fédéralé de Lausanne. She holds a Diplome d’études Approfondies in international economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and a Master’s in international law and economics from the World Trade Institute in Berne, Switzerland. She did her undergraduate degree at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, USA.

Prior to WIPO, Intan worked at the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.

élodie Carpentier is a research fellow at the Department for Economics and Data Analysis of the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, on a joint fellowship with Invent Together (Washington DC, USA). She conducts research on the extent and origins of diversity gaps in innovation, with a specific but not exclusive focus on the gender gap in patenting. She is also involved in organizing a seminar series, co-organized by WIPO and Invent Together, on the IP gender gap in different regions of the world.

Elodie received her PhD in Economics from the University of Bordeaux (France), where she also obtained a Master of Science in Risk Engineering for Economics and Finance and a Bachelor of Science in Strategy and Economics. During her PhD, she visited the Scheller Jr. College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (USA) on a Fulbright scholarship, and the Department of Management, Strategy, and Innovation at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium).

Julio Raffo is Head of the Innovation Economy Section at the Department of Economics and Data Analytics of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Before joining WIPO, he had research experience in the école Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland); the Institut Fran?ais des Relations Internationales (IFRI, France); the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO, USA); the Red Iberoamericana/Interamericana de Indicadores de Ciencia y Tecnología (RICYT); the Centro de Estudios en Ciencia, Desarrollo y Educación Superior (REDES/CONICET, Argentina); EUROSTAT’s Science, Technology and Innovation Statistics unit (STI, Luxembourg); and, the Instituto de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia (IEC-UNQ, Argentina).

He holds an Economics degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, a Master degree in Industrial Organization, Innovations and International Strategy and a PhD in Economics from the Université de Paris Nord.

His main research interests are the economics and metrics of innovation and intellectual property, with a particular focus on their intersection with socioeconomic development.