The road to gender equality remains long

There are more people in a position of power in the US – chief executives, senators and the like – named John than there are women, according to a recent analysis by the New York Times. If that sounds familiar, it is because these kinds of statement have been true for years.

In 2015, for example, an analysis by the Guardian showed that CEOs called John, or Jean, outnumbered female chief executives by 17 to seven in FTSE100 companies. The problem persists internationally. An analysis by the New Zealand Herald in April found that men named John outnumber women four-to-one among chief executives.

If you were cynical, you could brush this aside and note that John appears to be a strangely popular name across the world. But of course, the blunt truth is that society really has not come that far in terms of gender equality. That reality might be harsher on some nations than others – New Zealand was actually the first self-governing country to introduce women’s suffrage in 1893, two and half decades before most of the rest of the world followed after World War I.

But universities pride themselves on being progressive institutions, so surely the situation must be looking more hopeful here. Such hope, sadly, is misplaced. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, if current rates are maintained, women will not file as many patents as their male colleagues in a single calendar year until almost 2100. That’s another 82 years. That means none of us is likely to see that day.

Let that sink in for a moment.

And then breathe a slight sigh of relief, because Washington University in St Louis last week published research into a blueprint to help tech transfer offices support female researchers in patenting and commercialising their work.

The research was led by Nichole Mercier, managing director of Washington’s tech transfer arm, its office of technology management (OTM), and her colleagues, who analysed the number of disclosures and patents filed by female faculty before and after the creation of the OTM’s Women in Innovation and Technology program, launched in 2014.

The news is good. The OTM experienced a 27% increase in interactions with female faculty during the 2013 to 2016 period compared with the preceding three-year period and, more impressively, the number of patents filed on behalf of female researchers shot up by almost 129%.

The news is not great though. In 2011, some 30% of faculty in the schools of medicine and of engineering and applied science were women, but less than 4.5% of them were named on invention disclosures. By 2016, still only 4.7% of – admittedly, all – female faculty had contributed to disclosures. It is an increase, but it is not good enough by a long shot.

Mercier and her co-authors found that there were several reasons for this. Women may have different risk profiles, benefit from fewer industry connections and may be less likely to approach the OTM at the same stage of research as a male colleague. The same challenges facing women across every other profession also affect women in academia – pregnancy and childcare.

There is some cause for optimism. Once a woman has secured her first patent, she becomes more likely to re-engage with the OTM. The Women in Innovation and Technology program has taken a range of steps to ensure that first patent is secured. It engages actively with female scientists, offers education about tech transfer, has been building an internal network of female peers that have already interacted with the OTM and has been seeking peers at other universities to create an external network.

These are small but important steps. The ecosystem would also benefit from more funds targeting female founders. There are some prominent examples – chipmaker Intel’s corporate venturing unit Intel Capital operates a fund aimed at women and minority founders, and BBG Ventures, a venture capital fund launched by media group Oath, also focuses on female founders – BBG stands for “built by girls”.

People across the innovation ecosystem are becoming increasingly aware that this problem will not simply fix itself. The University Industry Demonstration Partnership, for example, took on the issues in a session that looked in detail at patents filed by women – you can read more about it in this issue.

A lot of work remains to be done. Mercier noted that Washington was one of the few universities to have such a dedicated program and called for more institutions to engage actively with their female scientists.

Will we see gender parity within our lifetime? It may not look promising, but neither did things in 1916.