Portugal is the European country with the highest percentage of female inventors. “It’s encouraging, but not enough”

Portugal ranks first in terms of female participation in the patent process. Between 2018 and 2022, the proportion of female inventors in Portugal reached 29.3%, an increase of 2.4 percentage points compared to the 26.9% recorded in the period from 2013 to 2017.

These figures are contained in a study released on Tuesday by the European Patent Organisation (EPO), which also highlights Portugal as having the second highest growth in women’s participation in inventive activity, behind only Turkey, which saw an increase of 4 percentage points.

In an interview with ECO, Cristina Margarido, coordinator of the study and patent examiner at the EPO, stresses that the progress, both at national and European level, “although encouraging, is not enough: even if we continue to evolve as we have done so far, we will eventually reach parity one day, but it is so far in the future that it is hardly worth thinking about”.

Looking at the average of the 22 European countries analysed (because they had at least 1,000 inventors during that period), the percentage of women among inventors in patent applications has increased only marginally in recent years: from 13% in 2019 to 13.8% in 2022. This means that female participation in this activity in Portugal is 15.5 percentage points higher than the European average.

According to the report prepared by the EPO’s Patent and Technology Observatory, although women are increasingly present in teams of inventors, they continue to be much less likely to be designated as individual inventors, which highlights the persistence of structural barriers.

Quoted in a statement, EPO President António Campinos emphasises that “there is a clear gain for Europe in strengthening women’s participation” in the sector, pointing to diversity not as an accessory element, but as “fuel” for disruptive innovation.

“This study exposes the obstacles that still stand in our way to progress, so that Europe can unlock its full potential for innovation in research, patenting and entrepreneurship”, he says.

António Campinos points out that, at present, around a quarter of EPO patent examiners are women, a figure that is increasing every year thanks to recruitment efforts: in 2025 alone, 31% of new examiners recruited were women, and the proportion of women in the ‘Young Professionals’ programme has remained above 50%.

Only Spain surpasses Portugal in female founders of start-ups with patent applications

The European Patent Organisation study also reveals that gender disparity is more evident in startups with patent activity than in academia and industry. In the European context, only 13.5% of startups with patents include a female founder, with the Netherlands, Austria and Germany recording the lowest rates.

In Portugal, this percentage rises to 15.7%, placing the country in second place, behind only Spain (19.2%), in terms of female participation among the founders of startups with patent activity – figures which, although “still very low”, represent a “positive development” compared to the previous study, Cristina Margarido points out. In addition, 22.9% of Portuguese start-ups with patent applications include at least one woman among their founders.

Nevertheless, newly created start-ups are apparently becoming more diverse, as the study data shows that they have a higher proportion of female founders in Europe (14% in younger companies versus around 5.9% in companies over 20 years old).

The biggest challenges for startups co-founded by women arise in terms of their expansion, with female representation declining in later rounds of funding. “The more the company develops, the more funding gaps there are”, points out Cristina Margarido, who highlights this issue as “the most glaring flaw” in the sector.

Universities and public research organisations have by far the highest proportion of female inventors (24.4%), while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual applicants have the lowest rates of female participation.

“If we want more female inventors, for various reasons that make it more beneficial to society — because it leads to better inventions and more inventions that affect everyone rather than just a part of the population — we will have to do something. One of the points that really stands out is the lack of investment in start-ups founded by women, and perhaps that is where we can start”, the study coordinator told ECO.

There are more female inventors in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and food chemistry industries

Another aspect highlighted in the EPO report concerns the under-representation of women among PhD holders with patent activity, despite their strong presence at PhD level, as a result of a “persistent ‘leaky pipeline’ that is “particularly visible when researchers move on to commercialising their inventions”.

However, the study concludes that “research conducted by women has inventive potential comparable to that of men”, suggesting that lower female participation in patenting “is not due to a lack of high-quality scientific results, but to social, institutional, and economic factors that shape career opportunities”.

Female participation is particularly prominent in the life sciences, namely in the pharmaceutical industry (34.9%), biotechnology (34.2%) and food chemistry (32.3%). This contrasts with other fields, particularly engineering, where levels are lower: machine tools (5.7%), basic communication processes (5.5%) and mechanical elements (4.9%).

Cristina Margarido also acknowledges to ECO that greater female participation in patenting brings “positive effects” to the economy, and that diverse teams (bringing together men and women) “also bring better results both for companies and in terms of products offered for sale to society”.

Finally, the report reveals that women are also increasingly present in professions that support the innovation system, currently representing 29.2% of European patent attorneys.