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This report summarizes a project carried out for the European Commission aimed at assessing the feasibility of producing patent and bibliometric indicators by the gender of the inventor/author. It would appear to be the first study of its kind, and the results provide some pioneering measures of sex-disaggregated S&T output and productivity.
The approach developed to genderize the data was based on identifying the sex of the first name of the author or the inventor. To do this, a comprehensive “first name database” was created, containing first names commonly used in each of the six EU countries selected for the study, and assigning a sex to each first name (some names of course can be used for both sexes).
This database was then applied to two datasets. The first was the set of patents published in 1998 by the European Patent Office which related to 100.000 inventors from the 6 EU countries selected for the study (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and UK). The second dataset was a sample of roughly 30.000 authors of scientific publications.
The political commitment to promote women in science at European Union level, launched in 1999, with the adoption of the Commission’s Communication, and backed up by the Council and Parliament Resolutions which followed in 1999 and 2000, is strong, and growing stronger in the European Research Area.
In terms of measurable progress, there has been a significant increase in the number of women taking part in the Framework Programme, in consultative committees, monitoring activities, evaluation panels and as project co-ordinators. In the Fifth Framework Programme Monitoring Panels, the concentration of women increased from 22% in 1999 to 30% in 2000, but remained at 30% in 2001.
Considerable efforts have been mobilised in order to review the presence and participation of women in science, and a picture of uneven representation has emerged from the available statistics. On a more encouraging note, the necessary instruments for robust sex-disaggregated data in the fields of research, technology and development are slowly moving into place at supra-national level. This is vital to ensure that future data availability can be progressively improved.
However, these surveys remain focused on human and financial inputs into scientific activities rather than on the output of science and technology. Patent and bibliometric data are commonly regarded as the best measures of scientific and technological production, so examining them from a gender perspective is important at European level. As an increasing proportion of the qualified scientific workforce, women represent a valuable resource. We therefore need to know more about the measures that should be implemented in order to help women achieve their full potential as scientists and researchers. For science to be truly excellent, the voice of women, collectively and as individual experts, must be properly represented, particularly since the system depends heavily on the peer review process.
At the present time, patent and bibliometric databases do not contain sex-disaggregated data. Using a pioneering technique, this feasibility study gives us a first insight into how many publications and patents are produced by women and men respectively, thus providing for the first time a set of sex-disaggregated S&T output data. These data provide a vital complement to the growing base of sex-disaggregated statistics of S&T, and this study marks a seminal step forward towards a better understanding of women’s role in science and technology.
It is hoped that this and future studies that draw from it may contribute to unravelling the short- and long- term policy questions. These include how best to adapt the scientific system to accommodate the changing profile of the scientific workforce; what we can learn from women as scientists to improve the high standards expected by society; and the degree to which the recognition and rewards of scientific achievement are still gendered. During the Sixth Framework Programme we hope that this report will act as springboard for future studies, that will in turn stimulate and strengthen the existing initiatives to redress important imbalances.