Intellectual Property Report

Where Should the Focus STEM From?: Achieving Gender Parity in Global Patenting

Innovation is the foundation of the patent system and gender diversity is crucial for advancing innovation. Why? Because gender diversity ignites new discoveries through expanding viewpoints, questions, and areas of interest to be explored. It follows that there is, or at least should be, a strong correlation between gender diversity and the patent system. In the World Intellectual Property Organization's ("WIPO") recent 2023 publication, The Global Gender Gap in Innovation and Creativity: An International Comparison of the Gender Gap in Global Patenting over Two Decades (the "Report"), the Report analyzes women's involvement in global patenting over the last two decades and finds women to be involved in only 23% of all applications, which represents 13% of all inventors listed.