LIFE SCIENCES
Where the gap is narrowest
WIPO says women were more than a quarter of inventors in fields such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and food chemistry in 2022 to 2024.
Compare fields
WHAT THE PATENT DATA SAYS
Every patent
names its inventors.
Those names tell a story about who invents.
Patent law requires every inventor to be named, but not their gender. By reading the first names on millions of applications, the UK Intellectual Property Office and WIPO have tracked how many inventors are women, and the share is rising slowly.
18% of PCT inventors in 2024 were women
Compare fields- Inventors are named
- Teams are the norm
- The gap varies by field
- Rising, but slowly
THE SHORT ANSWER
Fewer than one
in five.
The share of women among named inventors has risen for decades.
It still varies a lot by field.
ENGINEERING
Where it is widest
The UK IPO found the lowest share of women inventors in mechanical engineering, and the highest in chemistry fields.
See the numbers
TEAMS
Often one woman on a team
Most patents with a female inventor name one woman, either alone or in a mostly male team, the IPO found. Applications with several women more than doubled from 1998 to 2017.
How it is counted
FOUR THINGS TO CHECK
Reading an inventor
statistic well.
Inventor gender figures are useful, but they are estimates built from names. These questions help you read any headline about them.
Ask what is being counted
A share of inventors is not the same as a share of applications naming a woman. In 2017 the IPO found 12.7% of inventors but 21% of applications.
Check which patents
WIPO's 18% covers international PCT applications. National figures, such as the IPO's UK-resident share, use different sets of patents.
Remember it is inferred
Gender is not recorded on applications. It is inferred from first names, with methods that work best for western names and cannot capture non-binary gender.
Look at the field
Overall averages hide big differences. Life sciences have far higher shares of women inventors than mechanical engineering.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Worldwide and at home,
the share is rising.
One figure from international applications,
one for inventors living in the UK.
18%
Women among inventors on PCT applications, 2024
Up 0.2 percentage points on 2023, and 6.4 points since 2010. Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest share, at 24.9%; Europe stood at 15.9%.
WORLDWIDE · WIPO
11%
Female inventors living in the UK, 2017
Up from 8% in 1998. Worldwide over the same period, the IPO found the female share of inventors almost doubled, from 6.8% to 12.7%.
UK RESIDENTS · UK IPO
The IPO also found that the share of applications naming at least one woman rose from 12% to 21% between 1998 and 2017, and those with at least as many women as men from 3% to 8%.
A QUICK FIELD CHECK
Where are women
named most?
Pick a group to see what the patent data shows about women inventors. The bar shows roughly how large women's share is in that group compared with the others.
Based on the UK Intellectual Property Office report Gender profiles in worldwide patenting (2019) and the WIPO PCT Yearly Review 2025. Gender is inferred from first names, so figures are estimates.
HOW THE COUNTING WORKS
A name,
not a form.
It is a legal requirement that every inventor is named on a patent application, but gender and other personal characteristics are not asked for. The IPO's study inferred gender from inventors' first names in the PATSTAT database, which gathers records from many patent offices.
The IPO calls the results experimental. Name sources lean towards western first names, so extra cleaning was done for names such as Asian names, inventors are only assigned a gender where confidence is high, and non-binary gender cannot be inferred from a name.
Questions
Questions people ask
What share of inventors are women?
WIPO says women were 18% of inventors listed in PCT international patent applications in 2024. The UK IPO found 12.7% of inventors worldwide were women in 2017, up from 6.8% in 1998.
How do they know an inventor's gender?
They do not ask. Patent applications must name each inventor, and researchers infer gender from first names. The IPO describes its results as experimental estimates.
Which fields have the most women inventors?
Life sciences. WIPO found women were more than a quarter of inventors in fields including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, food chemistry and analysis of biological materials.
Is the UK above or below average?
The IPO found 11% of UK-resident inventors were women in 2017, up from 8% in 1998, a little below the 12.7% it found worldwide.
Do women invent alone or in teams?
Mostly in teams. The IPO found most patents with a female inventor name one woman, often in a mixed team, though applications with several women more than doubled from 2% to 4.5% between 1998 and 2017.
Sources
- UK IPO: Gender profiles in worldwide patenting, an analysis of female inventorship (2019, PDF)
- GOV.UK press release (2019): Report, gender balance in worldwide patenting
- GOV.UK press release (2016): Female inventorship on the rise worldwide
- WIPO: PCT Yearly Review 2025, executive summary
Updated