Women inventors

Inventions shape the world around us, yet the women behind many of them often go unrecognised. While names like Edison and Bell are well known, countless essential innovations were pioneered by brilliant female minds. Fiona Fairhurst helped revolutionise competitive swimming with her drag-reducing swimsuit design, while Carmen Hijosa developed a sustainable alternative to leather using pineapple leaf fibres.

Today, women continue to lead with creativity and ingenuity across fields like science, technology, medicine and sustainability. This page celebrates their achievements and highlights the ongoing impact of women inventors whose ideas are changing the way we live, work and connect.

Women at the core of innovation

Share of patents

25% of patents

filed at the EPO from Europe have at least one woman inventor

Share of inventors

13%

of inventors from patent applications in Europe are from women

Share of women in STEM

73 women inventors

to date have been awarded the EPO’s “European Inventor Award” as of 2025 for their groundbreaking ideas that are shaping the future.

Q&A – Insights from the EPO

How is Europe performing compared to other countries with regards to its share of women inventors?

The share of women inventors has increased steadily over time, but is still below parity with that of inventors who are men. In EPO countries, the women inventor rate (WIR), which measures the percentage of women inventors among all inventors in patent applications in a given year, increased from around 2% in the late 1970s to over 13% in 2019. Countries like P.R. China or R. Korea have higher values of around 25%-30%, while Japan lies behind Europe and US, with similar WIR values to those of Europe.

Read the complete study

In what technologies are women inventors more present?

Chemistry stands out as the technology sector with the highest share of women inventors. The WIR in the 2010–2019 period reached over 22%, while the values in other technology sectors ranged from 10.1% in instruments to 5.2% in mechanical engineering. Within the chemistry sector, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals have WIR values over 30%

Read the complete study

What type of applicants have more women inventors?

Patent applications from universities and PROs have a significantly larger share of women inventors than their counterparts from companies. The WIR of 19.4% for this segment in 2010–2019 significantly exceeds that of individual inventors (9.3%) and private companies (10.0%).

Read the complete study

Publications

Study

Women’s participation in inventive activity

Learn more about women inventors in the study published in 2022.

Case study

Dermis Pharma

How did strong IP empower women inventors to commercialise breakthrough wound-healing technology?

Women innovators in focus

Rochelle Niemeijer, Young Inventors Prize, 2024

Niemeijer is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Nostics, a company that uses nanotechnology, photonics and machine learning to develop new and advanced diagnostics solutions. The company is developing a pioneering device that can quickly identify the bacteria causing an infection. By enabling fast and accurate diagnoses, doctors can make better treatment decisions and tackle the ever-growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections.

Olga Malinkiewicz and team, European Inventor Award and Popular Prize 2024

Olga Malinkiewicz is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Saule Technologies, a company pioneering the industrial-scale production of perovskite solar cells. Her team has developed lightweight, flexible, and low-cost solar panels using inkjet printing technology, making solar energy more accessible and versatile. Their innovation opens up new possibilities for integrating solar power into everyday materials, from building facades to portable electronics.

Patrizia Paterlini‑Bréchot, Research, European Inventor Award 2019

Patrizia Paterlini‑Bréchot, an Italian molecular biologist and oncologist, founded Rarecells Diagnostics and developed the patented ISET® blood filtration method - able to detect a single circulating tumour cell in a 10 ml blood sample years before tumours become visible on scans - providing a rapid, non‑invasive tool for early cancer detection.

Madiha Derouazi & Elodie Belnoue and team, European Inventor Award, SME category, 2022

Madiha Derouazi (Swiss biotechnologist) and Elodie Belnoue (French immunologist), with their AMAL Therapeutics team, invented the KISIMA vaccine platform - combining antigen, immune‑stimulating molecule, and delivery peptide into a single therapeutic vaccine - now in human trials for colorectal cancer, and their company was later acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim for €425 million, marking a major European biotech milestone.