Why are there so few female inventors?

Abstract

Only a small fraction of inventors are women. Using Finnish administrative data linked to patent records, I show that educational and occupational sorting explain roughly half of the gender gap in patenting. The remaining half arises because women patent less than men in nearly all occupations, even after controlling for education, high school grades, and employing firm. Career effects of parenthood are a key mechanism: using a matched-control event-study design, I find that mothers' annual patenting rates decline by 78% after their first childbirth, with partial long-term recovery, whereas fathers' patenting rates increase persistently by roughly 10%.