Abstract: Women account for just 15% of patent inventors in Europe and the U.S. Broadly, these gender gaps could stem from differential costs and benefits that come with innovation. I provide new evidence on both of these margins by linking patent records to detailed Finnish administrative data. Event-study estimates indicate that women and men receive substantial and broadly similar career returns to innovation, but that women alone face sharp trade-offs between inventor careers and family formation. Female inventors delay childbearing until after their first patent application, and this delay is associated with a persistent decline in cumulative fertility. After having children, female inventors also experience a large and long-lasting drop in patenting activity. Male inventors show no evidence of such tension between inventive careers and family formation. My findings indicate that steeper career–family trade-offs, rather than lower financial incentives, can help explain women’s underrepresentation in innovation. 

Abstract:  Only a small fraction of inventors are women. Using Finnish administrative data linked to patent records, I show that educational and occupational sorting explain roughly half of the gender gap in patenting. The remaining half arises because women patent less than men in nearly all occupations, even after controlling for education, high school grades, and employing firm. Career effects of parenthood are a key mechanism: using a matched-control event-study design, I find that mothers’ annual patenting rates decline by 78% after their first childbirth, with partial long-term recovery, whereas fathers’ patenting rates increase persistently by roughly 10%.

• "Osaajia hyödyntävät nuoret yritykset versovat innovaatioita" — with Mika Maliranta, Ari Hyytinen, Eero Nurmi, and Otto Toivanen; Talous ja Yhteiskunta 3/2025