Women And IP: A Continuing Journey

It's now over 30 years since I joined the patent attorney profession. When I started, there were relatively few female patent attorneys, partly due to much lower numbers of women studying STEM subjects at university. I recall I was one of about six women in a cohort of 90 studying chemistry at Imperial College, and there were even fewer in the engineering departments. Today, thankfully there are more women in the profession – but there are still things we need to improve.

As next year's World IP Day on 26 April will focus on "Women and IP: Accelerating Innovation and Creativity", this is a good time to reflect on the progress made, and what steps we still need to take.

Greater diversity in IP