The European Patent Office (EPO) has found in a study ("Women's participation in inventive activity," November 2022) that 13.2% of people named as inventors in patents in Europe are women inventors. The study is based on an analysis of the proportion of women inventors in all European patent applications filed with the EPO between 1978 and 2019.

The analysis provides data on female inventors for different countries, time periods, technical fields and applicant profiles.

Among the member states of the European Patent Organization, Germany has among the lowest share of female inventors, at 10.0%, for the period 2010 to 2019.

The technology sector with the highest share of female inventors is chemistry (22.4% in the period 2010 to 2019). Within the chemical sector, over 30% of patent applications in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals named as inventors are female inventors.

The technology sector with the lowest percentage of female inventors is mechanical engineering (5.2%).

The EPO report also shows that more female inventors are involved in patent applications filed by universities and public research institutions than in patent applications filed by private companies.