Male and female involvement in patenting activity in Spain

Scientometrics (2010) 83:605–621 DOI 10.1007/s11192-009-0131-x

Male and female involvement in patenting activity in Spain Elba Mauleoń • Marıá Bordons

Received: 17 November 2009 / Published online: 17 December 2009 Ó Akade´miai Kiado´, Budapest, Hungary 2009

Abstract The involvement of male and female scientists in the technological activity developed in Spain is analysed through the study of patent applications filed with the Spanish OEPM database during the period 1990–2005. Comparative analyses based on participation, contribution and inventors by gender are presented and discussed. The study reveals a low female involvement in technology, which tends to concentrate in specific institutional sectors (public research institutions) and technological sections (A/Human Necessities and C/Chemistry). Over the 16-year period analysed the involvement of female scientists rose at a higher rate than that of men in most of the institutional sectors and technological fields. The highest relative increase corresponds to University and Spanish National Research Council, and our data suggest that it is enhanced by collaboration. To make the production of sex-disaggregated technology indicators easier the inclusion of the sex of the inventors as an additional field in patent databases would be desirable, as well as a higher normalisation of inventor names, applicant names (full names) and institutional affiliations. Keywords

Gender Technological activity Spain Patenting activity

Introduction The underrepresentation of women in science and technology is at present a matter of great concern in the most advanced countries. In 2003 the proportion of female scientists in EU25 accounted for 29% of the total, with variations across countries, institutional sectors and scientific fields. It has been described that women tend to concentrate in medical sciences, social sciences and humanities while are hardly present in engineering. The proportion of E. Mauleoń (&) M. Bordons Instituto de Estudios Documentales en Ciencia y Tecnologıá (IEDCYT), Center for Human and Social Sciences (CCHS), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] M. Bordons e-mail: [email protected]

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E. Mauleoń, M. Bordons

female scientists declines as we go up in the academic ladder, being women underrepresented among senior scientists as well as in decision-making bodies. Since female situation varies by countries, the collection of data at the country level is needed, as well as the development of specific studies to explore which are the factors that lead to this short number of women in some areas and jobs, detect specific areas in which policy intervention is needed to improve gender balance and evaluate the effects of the actions implemented. Accordingly, the production of science and technology indicators by gender is currently encouraged at the national and supranational levels. Some studies focus on the input side of the research process and comparative analyses on human and economic resources by gender are developed. Other authors pay attention to the output side of the process and quantitative indicators based on scientific publications and patents are used for the comparison of male and female research performance. However, the development of bibliometric studies is hindered by the difficulties related to the identification of the sex of the authors of papers, since many publications and bibliographic databases only include the initials of the author names and not their full names. Concerning patents, full name of inventors are usually recorded in databases, but even in this case the identification of the sex of scientists is a laborious and often difficult task. The existing bibliometric studies on scientific and technological performance by gender address the issue at different levels and with different purposes. Firstly, studies at the individual level require the collection of the scientific and/or technological output of a given population of scientists and the calculation of indicators at the individual level which allow later inter-gender comparisons of research performance. There are many studies on the literature that follow this approach, most of them devoted to the study of scientific productivity (see for example Long 1990; Prpic 2002; Mauleon and Bordons 2006). More recently, technological output has been incorporated in the analyses. Some studies adopt a gender perspective and analyze male and female differences in the propensity to patent, patent productivity and impact of the inventions (for example Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2005). More often, the sex is just one more variable to be considered in the analysis of different aspects of research performance such as the influence of institutional factors on patenting activity, the relationship between technology transfer and research output or the differences in the propensity to patent across fields (see Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2005; Azoulay et al. 2007; Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2008). The combined use of patent-based indicators with demographic or sociological data has proved especially relevant in the analysis of the technological performance at the individual level. On the other hand, studies at the macro level aim at quantifying the share of female and male scientific and/or technological output by countries, institutional sectors or technological fields. This is the approach followed in the present paper. Since the use of standardised indicators is essential, a number of studies to assess the feasibility of producing patent and scientific publication-based indicators by gender have been developed by request of the European Commission. The most prominent is the work of Naldi et al. (2004), which focuses on differences by gender in scientific and technological activity in a sample of European countries (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Sweden). Although the aims of this project were essentially methodological, it showed original and novel results about the situation of women in science and technological activity. Concerning technology, which is our area of concern in the present paper, the work of Naldi identified a large gender gap: 97% of patents had at least one male inventor, compared to only 12% with at least one woman inventor. This gender gap varies across

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Male and female involvement in patenting activity in Spain

607

countries (Frietsch et al. 2009), institutional sectors (Morgan et al. 2001; Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2008) and fields (Giuri and Mariani 2007). Further research is still needed to quantify this gap, identify underlying factors and monitor how it evolves over the years. The scarce presence of female scientists and inventors has been interpreted by the European Union and the OECD countries as a barrier for the economic growth of countries. Women constitute a potential of human capital which is only partly exploited. Therefore, to identify disciplines and sectors with a serious deficit of female involvement and to implement specific strategies to rise their development and attractiveness for women are current objectives pursued worldwide. Improving women participation in technology will be to the benefit of economy as a whole. Moreover, in the context of the current world-wide economic crisis, scientific and technological innovation are being reconsidered as essential elements that need to be taken into account to overcome the serious difficulties and restrictions existing on the global economy. Bolstering and increasing the transfer of technological and scientific knowledge to the productivity sector will open new possibilities for the commercial exploitation of research results contributing to the recovering of countries’ competitiveness within the international panorama of the crisis.

Objectives The objective of this study is to analyse the involvement of men and women in the technological activity developed in Spain and to detect the main trends over a 16-year period. As indicators of technological progress we will focus on patents, since they provide a uniquely detailed source of information on inventive activity. Although patents-derived indicators have different shortcomings extensively described (see for example OECD 1994; Archibugi 1992), their reliability/relevance for the study of technological activity is widely accepted (Narin 1994; Nesta and Patel 2004). This paper analyses the presence of women inventors in patents filed by Spanish inventors or applicants with the Spanish Office of Patents and Marks (OEPM) during the period 1990–2005. The following questions are addressed: – What is the involvement of women in patenting activity? – Is there any sign of horizontal segregation? Do female patents concentrate in specific subjects? – Are there differences in female patenting activity by institutional sectors? – What are the trends over time? Have women increased their presence as inventors in the 16-year period analysed? Are we moving towards a situation of greater equality between men and women? To support the relevance of the research here presented we would like to remark several points. Firstly, this study follows the recommendations made by the European Union on the necessity of collecting precise and reliable data regarding the situation of women in science and technology, since there is a deficit of information in this topic. Secondly, the indicators used correspond to those suggested by the pioneering study of Naldi et al. (2004) to make comparisons possible. Thirdly, the analysis of a long period of time (16 years) will enable us to identify tendencies in the involvement of men and women in patenting activity.

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Methodology Patent records with Spanish applicants or inventors and application years 1990–2005 were downloaded from the Spanish OEPM database. Names of inventors were standardised and their sex was recorded according to the full names included in the patents. Patent search and data management In order to identify all those patents with Spanish inventors filed with the Spanish Patent Office during the 16 years of the study, a search strategy based on the date of filing the application (1990–2005) and country of the inventors or applicants (Spain) was made. The study focuses on published patent applications and not only on those that were granted. This is very common in patent studies because applications represent the first formal communication of an invention (Balconi et al. 2004; Schild 1999; Breschi et al. 2007), the rate of granted patents is very high and the procedure for granting can be very long (several years), so the use of patents granted would have limited the scope of this research and prevent us from identifying possible inventors. The data retrieved were downloaded to a relational database, including for each patent application different data such as: title of the invention, number of application, date of application, priority details, thematic code according to the International Patent Classification, inventors (all name of inventors included) and applicants (only the first applicant of invention included). To cope with the lack of normalization of institutional addresses, a semiautomatic encoding of institutional addresses of applicants was developed following a codification system of centres previously used for bibliometric studies based on scientific publications (Fernańdez et al. 1993). For foreign addresses, only the country was codified, whilst country and institutional sectors (University, Hospital, Industrial firms, CSIC, etc.) were recorded for Spanish addresses. The lack of standardisation of inventor names is a serious problem for the development of patent-based studies at the micro level because an inventor’s productivity can be scattered over different variants of the same name. To solve this problem, an algorithm for the semiautomatic encoding of inventor names was developed, following the suggestions proposed by Ruı´z Pe´rez et al. (2002) and the methodology developed by Costas and Bordons (2007). We coded scientists as man or woman using their first names. The International Patent Classification (IPC) system is used to classify patents. This classification was established by the Strasbourg Agreement in 1971, and it is up-dated periodically. It is based on a hierarchical system of language independent symbols for the classification of patents according to different areas of technology. It contains eight main sections identified by a title and a capital letter from A to H: – – – – – – – –

Section Section Section Section Section Section Section Section

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A: Human Necessities B: Performing Operations; Transporting C: Chemistry; Metallurgy D: Textiles; Paper E: Fixed Constructions F: Mechanical Engineering; Lighting; Heating; Weapons G: Physics H: Electricity


609

Each section includes several classes, which are subdivided in different subclasses, groups and subgroups. For this analysis the International Patent Classification was used at section level considering the eight sections mentioned above. Indicators of technological activity Male and female involvement in Spanish technological activity was analysed through different indicators. Measures of technological activity by gender Different indicators were used following Naldi et al. (2004): – Participation: the percentages of patents with only male inventors, only women inventors and both (men and women together) were calculated (whole counting). For the sake of clarity only two types of patents are considered in some parts of the study: female patents (which include ‘‘only women’’ and ‘‘men & women patents’’), and male patents (including ‘‘only men’’ and ‘‘men & women patents’’). These two categories can be more easily compared with the corresponding categories of contribution. – Contribution: it measures the involvement of each gender in the production of patents. It is based on fractional counting and assumes that all inventors have the same level of implication in the development of an invention. For instance, in a patent with ‘‘n’’ inventors, the contribution of each gender is equal to the number of inventors of the respective gender divided by ‘‘n’’. The sum of the contribution of all the genders involved in a patent is equal to 1. – Presence: total number of men and women inventors in each patent application. – Relational contribution–participation rate by gender. It is calculated as ð1 Contribution=ParticipationÞ This rate ranges between 0 and 1. Participation of a given sex on a set of patents is always higher or equal to contribution. The rate is equal to 0 if participation is equal to contribution; and it increases as the difference between both measures gets larger. It allows us to quantify the percentage difference between participation and contribution. Thus, if [1 - C/P] for a given sex in a set of patents is equal to 0.45, it means that the contribution is 45% lower than the participation. In sum, participation considers female patents all those with at least one woman, while the contribution is a more precise indicator that weights involvement according to the proportion of male and female inventors in each patent. The [1 - C/P] indicator allows us to identify in which institutional sectors and technological sections there are larger differences between participation and contribution as well as monitor its evolution over time. Collaboration indicators – Co-inventorship index, or number of inventors per patent, to be calculated in male and female patents. – Percentage of male and female patents with a single inventor. The structure of this paper is as follows. Firstly, general data concerning time evolution of patents, distribution by institutional sectors and thematic areas are shown as a general and

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reference framework. Secondly, the involvement of men and women as patent inventors is explored by years, institutional sectors and thematic fields. For the time trend analysis the application year of the patents was considered. Finally, the data are discussed in relation to with previous literature on the topic.

Results In the period of analysis, the Spanish Patent Office published a total of 25,309 patents with at least one Spanish inventor or applicant. Around 10% of the patents were excluded from the study due to incomplete information about inventors and 4% were drop out for sex unknown. The study of the involvement of male and female inventors in Spanish technological output was limited to 21,077 patents (83%). According to Fig. 1, the productivity sectors with higher number of patents filed with OEPM are industrial firms (54% of patents), and individual inventors (30%). Low activity is observed for universities (10%) and for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) (4%). Over the years an increasing trend in the number of patents was observed; the highest increase corresponded to individuals and university patents (average increasing annual rate around 15 vs. 3% for the total Spanish output) (Bordons et al. 2008). The distribution of the Spanish patents by technological sections (Fig. 2) shows that the fields with more patents are Section B/Performing Operations, Transporting (29%), followed by Section A/Human Necessities (28%) and Section G/Physics (15%). Figure 2a shows the average thematic profile of the country, to be used as a reference to which male and female profiles can be compared. However, it should be kept in mind that there are differences in thematic profile by institutional sectors: the industrial sector and individuals are preferably oriented towards Section B/Performing Operations, Transporting and A/Human Necessities (Fig. 2b); universities show high relative activity in section C/Chemistry, G/Physics, and A/Human Necessities; and CSIC presents its higher activity in section C/Chemistry (Fig. 2c) (see Bordons et al. 2008, for detailed data).

12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 N. patents

Industry

Individuals

University

CSIC/Government

Others

11,383

6,418

2,060

818

398

Fig. 1 Distribution of patent applications by institutional sectors (OEPM, 1990–2005). (Note: N = 21,077 patents, in which the sex of all inventors was identified)

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611

Fig. 2 Percentage of patent applications by technological section and institutional sectors a total country; b private sector; c public research sector

Participation, contribution and number of male and female inventors over time In the whole period, 16% of Spanish patents had at least one woman, their contribution was of 9% (fractional counting), and they constitute 13% of Spanish patent inventors. It is interesting to remark that women tend to work in mixed-sex teams more frequently than alone or in only-women teams (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Participation, contribution and number of inventors

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612 100.00 90.00 80.00 70.00

Male participation Male contribution

%

60.00

% Male inventors Female participation

50.00

% Female inventors Female contribution

40.00 30.00 20.00 10.00 0.00

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Application year

Fig. 4 Yearly evolution of participation, contribution and inventors by gender

Throughout the period an increasing trend in the involvement of women in technological output is observed by means of the different indicators used (participation, contribution and number of inventors). As displayed in Fig. 4, the percentage of patents with at least one woman rose from 9% in 1990 to 18% in 2005, while female contribution increased from 5 to 10% during the same period. Concerning the number of inventors, 8% were women in 1990 vs. 15% in 2005. Female participation, contribution and inventors increased by a factor of three, double than that of their male counterparts. It is interesting to remark that patents with mix-sex teams of inventors exhibit the highest increase: at the beginning of the period, only 7% of patents were signed by men and women together and 16 years later this percentage is around 15%. Although the number of patents signed only by women has also grown over time, it remains very low and its progression is not so clear. Participation, contribution and inventors by gender and institutional sector Differences in the involvement of men and women scientists by institutional sectors are explored in Fig. 5, in which participation and contribution data are compared. In the left chart of this figure we can see that the percentage of female patents has its highest values at the Spanish National Research Council (around 60% of patents include at least one female inventor), followed by Universities (45%). Patents with mixed-sex teams are more frequent than only women ones in all sectors except in individuals. The pattern of contribution by institutional sectors is very similar to that of participation, but with lower values (right chart in Fig. 5). For the whole sample of patents, female contribution was half participation (46% lower, since 1 - [C/P] = 0.46) (Table 1), which can be explained by the lower activity of women as single inventors of patents as well as to their high rate of collaboration with men. The lowest [1 - C/P] rates are attained by individuals, maybe due to the higher presence of single-inventor patents in this sector, even

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Fig. 5 Male and female participation and contribution by institutional sector

Table 1 Involvement of men and women in patents by institutional sectors Participation (P)

Contribution (C)

Inventors (I)

1 - C/P

% Male

% Male

% Male

Female Male

% Female

% Female

% Female

(1990–2005) change Female P

Industry

C 5.3

I

97.7

10.6

94.6

5.5

91.0

9.0

0.48

0.03

Individuals 93.3

10.9

91.4

8.6

90.4

9.6

0.21

0.02

-3.1 -1.7 -0.7

University 97.7

45.2

80.4

19.6

77.5

22.5

0.57

0.18

25.1 13.8 15.2

CSIC/gov

95.1

60.3

70.4

29.6

67.4

32.6

0.51

0.26

19.7 11.2 13.2

Total

96.3

16.2

91.2

8.8

86.6

13.4

0.46

0.05

9.5

2.7

5.0

3.6

7.6

Note: The column ‘‘(1999–2005) change’’ includes percentage of change in female involvement (percentage points). It is calculated as (% women in 2005 - % women in 1990)

for women. As observed in Table 1, male contribution values are lower than participation in CSIC/government institutions (26% lower, as derived from the table), which can be explained by the high collaborative character of research in this sector (see ‘‘Male and female collaboration by institutional sector and technological sections’’.). It is curious to observe that female involvement is poorer in those sectors with higher patenting activity. Thus, the industrial sector, which is responsible of 54% of the patents, holds the lowest level of female activity, while CSIC, universities and other public research institutions—which contribute only to 14% of total Spanish patents—show the highest female participation. This can be related with the reduced presence of female scientists working in industry (see ‘‘Discussion’’). Last column in Table 1 shows the percentage of change in female involvement, calculated as the difference between the share of women in the most recent year and that in the initial year within each institutional sector. Only the change for the minority sex (women) is presented. Over the years, female relative involvement grew faster than that of men in almost all institutional sectors (except in individuals), as observed by their positive change. The most pronounced rise was observed in university and CSIC, in which the percentage of patents with at least one woman increased by around 20 percentage points,

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while female contribution and inventors increased by around 11–15 percentage points (Table 1). Participation, contribution and inventors by gender and technological section Women involvement in patents is unequally distributed by technological sections. The percentage of patents with at least one woman varies from 6% (Sections E and F) to 44% in Section C (participation). The contribution of women shows a pattern very similar to that of participation, but with lower values. It ranged from 4% (Sections E and F) to 20% (Section C) (Table 2). Differences between participation and contribution were higher for women than for men. In fact, contribution values were 50% lower than those of participation in Sections C, G and H (see [1 - CP] column in Table 2). In relation to time trends, female involvement tended to increase at a faster rate than that of men in all technological sections (positive change in the last column of Table 2). The highest increase in the percentage of patents with at least one woman (participation) corresponded to sections C/Chemistry, G/Physics (?15 percentage points each) and H/Electricity (?14 points). Section C/Chemistry is a very productive one (Fig. 2) which had above-average female participation also at the beginning of the period. Specially interesting is the case of G/Physics and H/Electricity, since they are beyond the traditional female specialisation profile. The distribution of the contribution of scientists by International Patent Classification sections allows us to compare the subject profile of men and women (Fig. 6). We can observe the high specialization of women in Section A/Human Necessities (33%) and Section C/Chemistry and Metallurgy (28%). For men the main activity appears in Section B/Performing Operations, Transporting (25%), followed by Sections A/Human Necessities (21%) and C/Chemistry (11%). The male profile is quite similar to that of the average country, as expected by the higher weight of their output on the total.

Section A. Human Necessities 40 30

Section H. Electricity

Section B. Performing Operations, Transporting

20 10 Section G. Physics

0

Section F. Mechanical Engineering, Lighting, Heating, Weapons

Section C. Chemistry, Metallurgy

Section D. Textiles, Paper

Section E. Fixed Constructions

Male contribution

Female contribution

Fig. 6 Thematic specialisation of male and female inventors (percentage contribution by gender)

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615

Table 2 Involvement of men and women in patents by technological sections Section N patents

Participation (P)

Contribution (C) Inventors (I)

1 - C/P

% Male

% Male

Female Male Female

% Female

% Female

% Male

% Female

(1990–2005) change

P

C

I

A

5,818

93.7

23.0

86.5

13.5

80.3

19.7

0.41

0.08

B

6,189

96.8

9.7

94.1

5.9

91.4

8.6

0.39

0.03

C

3,297

95.7

44.4

79.2

20.8

73.6

26.4

0.53

0.17

D

501

96.0

8.2

94.2

5.8

92.4

7.6

0.29

0.02

4.5 3.2

7.1

E

2,427

96.6

6.0

95.5

4.5

95.2

4.8

0.25

0.01

4.8 2.9

3.6

F

2,327

97.9

6.3

96.4

3.6

95.1

4.9

0.42

0.02

10.2 4.2

6.7

G

3,290

97.7

16.4

92.4

7.6

89.0

11.0

0.54

0.05

15.3 6.0

9.9

2,170

97.7

11.1

94.5

5.5

92.6

7.4

0.51

0.03

13.9 8.1

8.0

21,077

96.3

16.2

91.2

8.8

86.6

13.5

0.46

0.05

9.5 5.0

7.6

H Total

11.0 6.8 10.5 8

4.5

8.7

15.3 7.2 10.6

Note: The column ‘‘(1999–2005) change’’ includes percentage of change in female involvement (percentage points). It is calculated as (% women in 2005 - % women in 1990)

Male and female collaboration by institutional sector and technological sections In this study, the collaboration practices of inventors are studied through the average number of inventors per patent (co-inventorship index) and the percentage of male and female patents with a single inventor. We have explored the differences of men and women’s collaborative practices by institutional sector and technological sections. On average, the number of inventors per patent was 1.81. It increased from 1.54 in 1990 to 1.92 in 2005. Female patents presented a higher number of inventors per patent than the male ones, although the increasing trend was observed for both sexes. The number of inventors per patent increased from 3.07 in 1990 to 3.75 in 2005 in the case of women, and from 1.55 in 1990 to 1.95 in 2005 in the case of men. In fact, female patents (set of patents with at least one woman inventor) present a higher number of inventors per patent than the male ones. Do women concentrate in high collaborative institutional sectors and/or technological fields or do they tend to collaborate more than men even within a specific institutional sector or technological field? Figure 7 shows the average number of inventors per patent by institutional sector and gender. As we can see, there are clear differences in the average number of inventors per patent across sectors (Fig. 7). That is, university and CSIC/ Government patents show a higher collaboration among inventors than patents from industrial firms or individuals. However, it is remarkable, than women tend to collaborate more than men in every sector. Concerning the technological section the co-inventorship index ranges from 3 inventors per patent in Section C/Chemistry to 1.2 in Section E/Fixed Constructions. In Fig. 8 we can see that women again have a higher co-inventorship index in all sections. In relation with the higher co-inventorship index of women, our data show that women appear less often than men as single inventor of patents, but also they tend to work in larger teams. Specifically, around 60% of male patents are single-inventor while only 19% of female patents have a single inventor. Furthermore, once excluded single-inventor patents, women still show a higher co-inventorship index than men (4.01 vs. 3.2). This trend is

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616 4.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 2.00 1.50 1.00 .50 .00

University

CSIC/Government

Industry

Individuals

Any woman

4.21

4.10

3.55

1.69

Any man

3.47

1.83

1.69

1.27

Total

3.45

3.47

1.68

1.26

Fig. 7 Co-inventorship index by gender and institutional sector

4.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 2.00 1.50 1.00 .50 .00

Section C

Section G

Section A

Section H

Section B

Section F

Section D

Section E

Any woman

4.08

3.85

3.41

3.32

2.95

2.84

2.54

1.83

Any man

2.96

2.14

1.94

1.91

1.55

1.51

1.50

1.30

Total

2.91

2.13

1.90

1.89

1.53

1.50

1.48

1.29

Fig. 8 Co-inventorship index by gender and technological sections

observed to some extent in all productivity sectors and technological sections, pointing to the higher tendency of women to collaborate.

Discussion The involvement of male and female scientists in the technological activity of Spain is analysed in the present study through the patent applications of Spanish inventors filed with the OEPM database during a 16-year period. Our study puts forward gender differences by institutional sectors and technological fields and proves useful to monitor trends over time. Some methodological problems emerged in the construction of sex-disaggregated indicators—derived from the type of information recorded and the extent to which it

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is standardised—; but they could be surpassed in the future with the necessary commitment of patent offices and database producers. Methodological aspects The main problems identified in the process of obtaining technological indicators by gender refer to: (a) the need of identifying the sex of the inventors—not included in patent applications—, and (b) the low standardization of inventors and institutional names in patent documents. Altogether these caveats hinder the automatic management of data to produce sex-disaggregated indicators as well as to develop other type of studies dealing with technological output by institutions or inventors. In the present study, the sex of the inventors was successfully identified in most of the cases relying in their first names. This was possible because most inventors had Spanish names, whose male or female nature was clear for the authors of this paper; however, important difficulties in the sex identification process were reported in the literature when inventors from different countries and cultures are to be studied (Naldi et al. 2004). To cope with this problem, the creation of a ‘‘first name database’’ containing first names commonly used in different countries has been suggested and implemented by different authors (for example Naldi et al. 2004; Frietsch et al. 2009). Although this can be a useful supporting tool, it is not a perfect solution, since an exhaustive recording of names is difficult and some names can be feminine in a given country and masculine in another (for example Dominique or Patrice). As a consequence, the inclusion of the sex of the inventors in the patent applications would be the most effective measure to make the production of reliable sex-disaggregated indicators possible. A higher normalization of institutional and inventor0 s names in the Spanish Patent database would be needed to make the automatic management of data easier and to improve the reliability of the results. In our study, the institutions of the applicants were semi-automatically codified to overcome this limitation. Concerning inventor names, their normalization is crucial to obtain data on productivity at the individual level, but not for other general indicators by gender, so they were not exhaustively standardized in our study. It should be mentioned that a small number of inventor’s first names (0.5%) were not fully recorded, but only with their initials, what made impossible their identification with gender purposes and lead us to exclude them from the analyses. The involvement of men and women in technological activity is studied here through specific indicators: participation, contribution, and number of inventors, as previously used by Naldi et al. (2004). Our results show that these indicators complement each other. Participation informs us about the percentage of documents with at least 1 woman, but could lead us to overestimate the involvement of the minority sex, in this case women. To avoid this problem, contribution weights female and male involvement according to the proportion of individuals of each sex among total inventors in a patent (fractional counting). It produces lower values than participation and it is influenced by the collaborative habits of inventors. Thus, in this study female contribution is half female participation (on average 46% lower), especially due to the lower tendency of women to sign as single inventors and to their higher trend to collaborate in predominantly male teams. Finally, the percentage of inventors by sex gives us an interesting global measure of the involvement of each sex in total production; being this indicator independent of the collaborative pattern of men and women. It is interesting to note that the share of male contribution is higher than the share of male inventors over the years (Fig. 4), while the opposite holds for women. Once again, differences in collaborative practices of men and women are the underlying

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reason. Female scientists work very little as single inventors—which have a heavy weight on contribution values—, and very often in teams with numerous male co-workers. The [1 - C/P] rate turned out to be useful to quantify the relation between contribution and participation by institutional sectors or technological sections and to monitor how this relation evolves over time. This indicator is higher for women, so larger differences between contribution and participation are found for this sex, especially in the most collaborative institutional sectors and technological fields. The fact that this rate remains quite stable over the years suggests that women have not changed significantly their collaborative practices over time. Inter-gender differences in patenting activity The first issue we would like to remark is the low female involvement observed in Spanish technological activity, since only 16% of patents had at least one woman, who represented 13% of inventors and contributed to 9% of technological output. These data turn out to be low if compared with the proportion of women in the population of Spanish scientists (around 36% in 2004) (INE 2009), or with the involvement of women in scientific publications (60% of the publications of Spain in the Web of Science had at least one women in 2004) (Moya-Anegoń et al. 2008). This data can be related with the higher involvement of women in science-oriented activities over technological ones, issue that is supported by a number of studies which range from the analysis of input data on R&D statistics (for example She Figures and related research), to studies based on surveys or questionnaires (Morgan et al. 2001; Giuri and Mariani 2007) and bibliometric analysis (Naldi et al. 2004). On the one hand, women are scarcely represented in the technological fields. On the other hand, several studies reveal that not only there are fewer women in the most technology-oriented fields, but also they patent at a lower rate than men (Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2005; Azoulay et al. 2007; Ding et al. 2006). To deal with the latter observation the development of studies at the micro level is needed. International comparisons of the present results should be done with caution since our study focuses on a national patent database, and inter-gender differences in the trend to patent in national or international patent systems might exist. In fact, our data show that the involvement of Spanish female inventors is slightly lower in the Spanish patent database OEPM (present study) than in the international European Patent Office (EPO) (Naldi et al. 2004; Bordons et al. 2008). The higher presence of patents by individuals in the OEPM database as compared with EPO could contribute to explain this issue, since women are poorly represented among individuals. To better understand this point, inter-database comparisons within each institutional sector would be needed. In any case, it is interesting to remark that in spite of the low technological involvement of women found in the present analysis, former studies have shown that the gender gap in Spain is narrower than in other European countries not only in technology, but also in science (Naldi et al. 2004; Frietsch et al. 2009). A south-north bias has been pointed out in previous studies, with a higher involvement of women in Spain, Italy and France, above northern countries such as Sweden, UK and Germany. Several factors such as the thematic specialisation of countries, the structure of their labour markets and socio-cultural issues might contribute to explain differences across countries in the involvement of women in technology (Frietsch et al. 2009). The most outstanding result of our study is that female scientists tend to increase their involvement in Spanish technological activity throughout the 16-year period analysed. This

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is supported by solid empirical evidence: the percentage of patents with at least one female inventor has increased from 9 to 19%; the female contribution grew from 5 to 10% and the percentage of female inventors rose from 8 to 15%. This trend towards a narrower gender gap has been also described for the patenting activity of different advanced countries in EPO (Frietsch et al. 2009), but not for a sample of life scientists in the USPTO (Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2005), in which the degree of gender disparity remained constant over time. In any case, differences may exist by fields and countries and, since variations occur very slowly, the analysis of long periods—as the one here presented—is needed to make changes evident. Inter-gender differences by fields and institutional sectors? Our data show differences in the thematic profile of men and women, issue that has been previously pointed out in other studies dealing with the patenting activity of a number of countries in international databases such as EPO (Naldi et al. 2004; Frietsch et al. 2009) or USPTO (Giuri and Mariani 2007). Although comparisons are limited by slight differences in the technological fields considered, most studies describe the highest involvement of women in Basic Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals (see for example Giuri and Mariani 2007; Frietsch et al. 2009) or in Life Sciences (Morgan et al. 2001), and the lowest in Engineering Technologies, being this general pattern shared more or less by all the analysed countries. In relation to gender differences by institutional sectors, our research shows that research institutions of the public sector, which include universities, CSIC and other public research centres, concentrate the highest relative female presence. In particular, CSIC patents show the highest female involvement: 60% of CSIC patents included at least one female inventor (contribution values around 30%) while 45% of university patents include at least one female inventor (contribution around 20%). On the other end of the spectrum, the industrial firms, which are the main applicants of patents in the Spanish Patent Office, show the lowest female involvement in their patents. Several factors might contribute to explain the differences regarding the involvement of women across technological fields and institutional sectors. Firstly, an unequal distribution of scientists by fields and institutional sectors will definitely have an effect on the output, and it is well-known that female researchers are less likely to choose to work in engineering and technology fields or in industry, which show low female involvement in our study. Concerning fields, horizontal segregation has been described in Spain (women constituted 47% of Social Sciences/Business and Law PhD graduates in 2004, but only 21% in Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction), but also in the UE-25 countries (She Figures 2006) and in other advanced countries as the US (National Science Foundation 2007) or Japan (Ogawa 2005). Concerning institutional sectors, it is interesting to note that in 2001 around 40% of researchers at the Spanish public administration were women, versus only 19% in the industrial sector. The corresponding figures for the whole EU-25 in 2003 were 35% of female researchers at the higher education and government sectors versus 18% for the industrial one (She Figures 2006). However, other factors besides those related with the unequal distribution of input resources can be relevant. In particular, the influence of the organizational context has been pointed out by Whittington and Smith-Doerr (2008), who suggest that a network-based organization is more beneficial for women than a hierarchical structure. Moreover, personal and socio-cultural factors can influence women in their selection of fields and institutional settings as well as in the development of their research. The propensity to

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patent varies across research topics, is function of scientific opportunities, and is influenced by scientists0 social networks, factors than can affect men and women differently (Azoulay et al. 2007). Inter-gender differences in collaboration among inventors The scientific collaboration, understood as an exchange of knowledge, resources and experiences between scientists, has become essential in the development of current research due to its increasing complexity, interdisciplinarity and cost. As a consequence, an upward trend in collaboration was described during the last decades for world scientific publications (increasing co-authorship) (Glanzel and Schubert 2004) and also for patents (increasing co-inventorship) (Breschi et al., forthcoming). Our study shows that collaboration among Spanish inventors tended to increase in the 16-year period analysed for both men and women. Interestingly, women turn out to be more likely to collaborate than men, as measured through their higher co-inventorship index and their lower percentage of single-inventor patents. Although the co-inventorship index varies by institutional sectors and technological sections, as a result of the disciplinespecific demands and organisation structures of centres, women tend to collaborate more than men in most of the sectors and technological sections. The higher orientation of women towards collective practices in science as compared with men, who are more frequently oriented towards the individual achievement (Whittington and Smith-Doerr 2008) has been argued as an explaining factor. Our data suggest that collaboration enhances women involvement, since the highest increase in the female share was mainly observed in highly collaborative environments. This is the case of public research institutions (university and CSIC), but also in sections A and C. However, further studies dealing with the collaborative behaviour of scientists and its relation with patenting are needed combining quantitative data with qualitative approaches (surveys, interviews, etc.) with the aim of better understanding inter-gender differences. In sum, this study provides an overview of the involvement of male and female scientists in the technological activity developed in Spain during a long period of time. We consider that sex-disaggregated technological indicators can be useful to detect in which fields and sectors the situations of gender inequality are more pronounced, to identify intergender differences in research performance and causing factors, to support policy makers in their decisions about potential interventions and to monitor the evolution of the situation over the years. Acknowledgements This study was supported by a FPU grant (AP2003-1361) from the Spanish Education Ministry, as well as by the Spanish Labour and Social Affairs Ministry (Research project I?D?I 87/02).

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