Gender patterns of research and licensing activity of science and engineering faculty

In this paper we extend our earlier work on science and engineering faculty disclosure and licensing activity to examine a characteristic of faculty ignored in our earlier work - the gender of faculty in our database of over 4500 faculty at 11 major universities. Not surprisingly, women comprise only 8.55% of the faculty in our sample. They are most represented in the biological sciences and the women in the sample are more likely to be younger faculty. The most striking result from highlighting women in the sample is that women are less likely to disclose inventions than men despite the fact that there are no significant differences in publication patterns. While disclosure activity varies by gender, we find that the disclosure activity of women and men converges over the period of our sample. © Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005.