France is only 13e position in Europe for the share of female inventors according to a study by the European Patent Office (EPO).
Few women file patents. Only 16.6% of patent applications in France were filed by women between 2010 and 2019, reveals a study by the European Patent Office (EPO). At European level, the proportion is even lower, with only 13.2% of patents filed by women.
Gender parity in terms of innovation is progressing a little in France, where the rate has increased by 2.6 points compared to the period 2000-2009. But France is only in 13e position in Europe for the share of women inventors, far behind Latvia (30.6% women), Portugal (26.8%) or Croatia (25.8%). Germany (10%) is lagging behind.
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“In the Baltic countries, in Portugal, in Spain, more patent applications come from universities and public research. This automatically increases the share of womennotes Yann Ménière, chief economist of the EPO, who points out that women are better represented in public research.
Women inventors are largely from the chemical sector, which includes pharmaceuticals and biotechnologies, and which accounts for 29% of patent applications. “There is a lack of women in the hard sciences such as mathematics, physics, computer science… Even though this is where there are the most inventions“, points out the chemist Claude Grison, winner of the European Inventor Prize 2022, awarded each year by the EPO.