Are women catching up in Chinese patenting?

Female under-representation throughout the innovation pipeline, from ideas to impact, is both widespread and well documented. Women are less likely to engage in patenting activities, produce fewer patents and publications, receive less recognition for their contributions, and face a lower probability of securing funding than their male counterparts. Relying on only a portion of the local talent pool is inefficient: it overlooks the "missing Curies" and "missing Tu Youyous" who could have made impactful inventions.

In this paper, Zixuan Zhang and I explore gender differences in patenting activities in China, focusing on two dimensions of gender disparities: participation and collaboration. Using a dataset of 281,801 patents submitted by independent inventors from the top 20 inventive Chinese cities between 2000 and 2015, we discover: (1) an increase in female participation in patenting over time, but a decrease in female collaboration; (2) variations in both female participation and collaboration across Chinese cities, which have changed over time; and (3) partial overlap in the factors driving female participation and collaboration, though distinct differences exist depending on the context.

These results suggest that initiatives to reduce gender disparities in participation might not have the same effect on collaboration. Policymakers should craft specific strategies to promote both women's participation and collaboration concurrently.

Available in Economics of Innovation and New Technology: https://doi.org/10.1080/10438599.2025.2550368