The patent truth about women inventors

The passing away of Rohini Godbole, particle physicist and a passionate champion of women in science, has prompted ruminations on how much of a role women scientists play, here and globally. Godbole was an honorary professor at the Centre for High Energy Physics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, and she was one of those rare women who opted for theoretical physics unlike the generally preferred experimental physics. In her case, it was more difficult to make it in the world of science, as she has related, because of her chosen specialisation: theoretical high energy physics. That is a common refrain across the world never mind the field women have opted for. They have had to struggle against formidable odds to pursue their ideas and research obsessions.

A telling case is that of biochemist Katalin Karikó, who has been hailed as the woman who shielded the world against the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by novel coronavirus SARS-COV-2. Along with immunologist Drew Weissman, she discovered how to enable messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to enter cells without triggering the body’s immune system. Their critical research laid the foundation for the mRNA vaccines that helped fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Hers was a classic struggle. Starved of funds and institutional support, Karikó was always dependent on a senior scientist to take her on as a research assistant and faced stark uncertainties as an untenured professor. That column was written two years before she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Weissman.

It would seem not much has changed since the days of the brilliant and exceptional Marie Curie who made a mark in cutting-edge scientific research despite tremendous odds more than a century before Karikó did. Curie was honoured with a second Nobel Prize in 1911, the only woman to have received two Nobel awards and the only scientist to have earned this in two different sciences—chemistry and physics. Like Curie who was Polish and did her research in France, Karikó is an émigré from Hungary who has gone back to teaching at the University of Szegard in her native country. But that is not really the issue although Curie did face an attack on her house by mob demanding her expulsion after the death of her husband Frenchman Pierre, who shared the Chemistry Nobel Prize with her in 1903.

The simple truth is the biases against women scientists persist to this day because of the male-dominated nature of scientific establishments across the world. But that is to ignore the policy changes that have been introduced, transformative in some places, to encourage women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), both in education and the workplace. Such biases are more prevalent in conservative societies such as India’s even though we might see a scattering of senior women scientists in a few fields such as space research.

It is a global phenomenon. Various reports give slightly different figures of women in STEM but none of them offers cause for cheer. A World Bank report on global trends in the participation of women and girls in STEM said that the poor representation of women in STEM is prevalent in every region. While graduation rates are higher among women, they are less likely to be found in STEM fields, especially in engineering, physics and ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The more depressing fact that emerged is that women who studied in STEM fields were less likely to enter STEM careers, and to exit these careers earlier than men. It also found that women in STEM careers published fewer papers and, perhaps not surprisingly, were also underpaid. The final figures were stark.

Women comprised 29.4 per cent of the STEM workforce in 146 nations evaluated in the 2023 Global Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF). That figure pertains to only entry-level workers. At high-level leadership roles women constitute just 12 to 17 per cent of STEM jobs.

As a result, their showing on invention was pathetic. Only 17 per cent of the inventors holding international patents were women in 2022, says an analysis by the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). So far behind were the women that it would take women almost four decades more to catch up with men in achieving gender parity in international patenting based on current trends. That is, until 2061.

But there was a paradox in India. The World Bank sample study found that the country had the highest level of 42.3 per cent of those in STEM education, much higher than in the US (34 per cent), Australia at 32.1 per cent and Germany at 27.6 per cent in 2017. What the report did not say was that women were are concentrated in life sciences with a negligible presence in engineering and technology. As they moved up the professional ladder, women simply tend to fall off. They accounted for just nine per cent of the fellows in the three top Indian science academies. Personal issues like family concerns may be one of the top reasons why there are few women in the STEM workforce, but this is not to deny the biases and systemic barriers women face in the workplaces and that such biases affect STEM products and innovations.

And yet one cannot help wondering why there are no women made of the steel and passion of a Marie Curie or a Karikó in India. After all, we have had exceptional women scientists and inventors in the last century when there was no enabling environment whatsoever for them. It’s important to remember one such extraordinary figure in these highly polluted times—Anna Mani. She is little known in India although the Keralite was one of the best regarded weather scientists in the world. Mani, a physicist by training, breached many barriers to pursue her passion for research and make path-breaking contributions. She is best remembered for making instruments to measure the weather starting in the 1940s, and for playing an important role in helping scientists to monitor the ozone layer. That was in 1964 when she created the first Indian-made ozonesonde, an instrument that measures the presence of ozone up to 35 km above the ground. And way ahead of her times she ventured into two virgin areas: solar energy and wind power. A biographer says this of Mani: “She made light of the difficulties and discrimination she encountered as a woman scientist and was disdainful of victim politics.”

That perhaps says it all.

This was first published in the 16-30 November, 2024 print edition of Down To Earth