Why female STEM PhDs are less likely to become new inventors

Female STEM PhD students are less likely to become new inventors than their male counterparts — a statistic that’s bad news for both inclusive innovation and commercial science.

In the innovation economy, individuals with PhDs in STEM fields — such as engineering, chemistry, and biology — are increasingly being employed outside academia, where they contribute to commercial science through patenting.

But research from MIT Sloan shows that there’s a gender gap in access to faculty advisors who are prolific inventors — a key factor that influences whether students become early inventors themselves. A paper co-authored by MIT Sloan professor Fiona Murray and Copenhagen Business School’s Mercedes Delgado found that female STEM PhD students were 21% less likely than their male counterparts to have been trained by top inventor advisors — those who had received at least seven patents while employed by a university during the study’s time frame.

......