Standing on the Shoulders of (Male) Giants: Gender Inequality and the Technological Impact of Scientific Ideas

Abstract

We argue that gender inequality in the innovation process means that scientific ideas are less likely to be used for technology development if their author is a woman versus a man. Testing this claim empirically is difficult because men and women may work on different ideas whose technological potential is largely unobservable. To address this challenge, we exploit the occurrence of simultaneous discoveries in science – i.e., instances when a man and a woman publish the same idea around the same time – and track the citations that those papers receive in patented inventions. We find that scientific papers receive 37% fewer citations in patents, that is, they have a lower technological impact, when they are authored by women. This gap does not appear driven by gender differences in the saliency of the scientists’ publications, but rather by inventors’ paying more attention to male-authored research. We also examine the work that the scientists in our data produce based on their simultaneous discoveries. While women subsequently publish at the same rate and in better journals than their male colleagues do, their publications have nevertheless a much lower technological impact. Our research highlights that gender inequality shapes more than individuals’ careers. It also shapes the extent to which ideas are used to create new technologies. We discuss the implications of this finding for research on innovation and gender inequality in science and technology.

Keywords: Gender Inequality, Science, Technology, Publications, Patents, Invention, Attention

JEL Classification: O32, J16