‘How and when you want to share your intellectual property with others should be your decision’

WIPO reports show that the gender gap among PCT inventors varies considerably from one country to another. Among the top 20 countries for patents, China, Spain and Turkey had the largest proportion of female inventors in 2021. Moreover, these three were the only top 20 countries where at least one-fifth of inventors were women. By contrast, slightly less than 10% of patent applicants in 2021 were women in Austria and Japan.

According to PCT data, although women are patenting in all areas of technology, most are doing so in chemistry-related fields. Women make up 60% of inventors in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and organic fine chemistry but only 30% in audiovisual technology, 26% in furniture and games, 22% in transportation and 21% in civil engineering. These findings tally with those of the UNESCO Science Report (2021), which found that women had attained gender parity in life sciences in many countries, or even dominated the field, but accounted for just 28% of engineers.

There are regional variations in PCT applications. In Europe and North America, biotechnology is the technical field with the largest proportion of women listed as inventors. In Asia, the same is true for pharmaceuticals. In Latin America and the Caribbean, women have attained gender parity in the fields of organic fine chemistry (51%), biotechnology (49%) and pharmaceuticals (48%). Again, this tallies with the finding in the UNESCO Science Report (2021) that 50% of researchers in Latin America are women. Only Southeast Europe (51%) has a higher share of women.

As the course concluded on Saturday, Dr Natalia Bruno from Italy, who is working in the field of quantum technologies, commented that the course had given her precious general knowledge on intellectual property and how to approach her creative ideas. 'I found it [the training] very useful', she said, 'especially all the information about how intellectual property can be used and the difference between a discovery and an invention. The other important thing will be to have contacts with the right people who could assist us in case we need advice'.

The Intellectual Property and Science Training Course is the first women-only training programme in this field conducted by the WIPO Academy. The course had to be cancelled in 2020 and 2021 on account of the Covid-19 pandemic.