High-Impact Innovations and Hidden Gender Disparities in Inventor-Evaluator Networks

TL;DR

This study reveals that gender disparities in innovation are mainly due to institutional practices affecting unconventional innovations and examiner assignment, rather than inherent gender bias or discrimination.

Contribution

It identifies institutional factors as key contributors to the gender innovation gap and suggests policy changes can address these structural issues.

Findings

Women face a significant innovation gap in unconventional ideas.

Female examiners reject more innovations by women than male examiners.

Institutional practices, not discrimination, primarily explain the gender gap.

Abstract

We study of millions of scientific, technological, and artistic innovations and find that the innovation gap faced by women is far from universal. No gap exists for conventional innovations. Rather, the gap is pervasively rooted in innovations that combine ideas in unexpected ways - innovations most critical to scientific breakthroughs. Further, at the USPTO we find that female examiners reject up to 33 percent more unconventional innovations by women inventors than do male examiners, suggesting that gender discrimination weakly explains this innovation gap. Instead, new data indicate that a configuration of institutional practices explains the innovation gap. These practices compromise the expertise women examiners need to accurately assess unconventional innovations and then "over-assign" women examiners to women innovators, undermining women's innovations. These institutional impediments negatively impact innovation rates in science but have the virtue of being more amenable to actionable policy changes than does culturally ingrained gender discrimination.