The flag: In France, only one in six patents is filed by a woman

In the field of women’s representation in science, France is still lagging behind. Evidenced by the number of patents (only 1 out of 6) filed by women in France. a study From the European Patent Office (EPO) only 16.6% of patent applications were filed by women in France between 2010 and 2019.

However, this phenomenon, good news, appears to be decreasing over time, with the proportion of patent applications increasing by 2.6% compared to 2000-2009. Le Figaro.

But this situation is not limited to France: at the European level, women were the source of only 13.2% of patent applications in 2019, which led to the advancement of the European Patent Office, including The study was conducted on 38 countries that are party to the European Patent Convention (EPC). France ranks 13th, ahead of Latvia (30.6%), Portugal (26.8%) and Croatia (25.8%). France’s neighbors are no better off: in Germany, only 10% of patent applications are filed by women.

The farthest countries are Liechtenstein (9.6%) and Austria (8.0%). In comparison, 15% of patent applications were filed by women in the United States in the same year. This percentage rises to 26.8% in China and 28.3% in Korea.

How do we explain these results?

“While the contribution of women to science and technology has steadily increased over the past decades, gender parity has not yet been achieved,” says the European Patent Office. How can the observation of failure and these differences between countries be explained?

“The differences between the member states of the European Patent Office can be explained to a large extent by the technological specialization of these countries and the contribution of universities and public research organizations (PROs) to patent activity,” says the European Patent Office. In countries that top the rankings, there will be more patent applications from universities and public research.

The European Patent Office shows that female inventors are mainly found in the chemical sector (they account for 29% of patents filed). They work, for example, in the field of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. But they are still underrepresented in the hard science sector such as mathematics, physics or computer science. Australian study He made this sad observation in 2018: If no action is taken, gender parity will be achieved in computer science…in 280 years.