A recent study published by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office analyzed the representation of women in worldwide patent inventorship. The study observed that between 1998 and 2017 the proportion of female inventors almost doubled from 6.8% to 12.7%.

The study includes analysis of female inventorship by country, by team composition, and by technology sector. An interesting observation that can be made from the data is that female participation in inventorship in the period from 1998-2017 was higher in Eastern Europe and Romance-language countries than in Germanic-language countries, including Canada and the United States. No hypothesis for this disparity was provided in the study.