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A geography of women inventors in Italy, 1861-1939

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Marco Martinez, Institute of Economics, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies

Version:  View help for Version V1

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Project Citation: 

Martinez, Marco. A geography of women inventors in Italy, 1861-1939. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-06-04. https://doi.org/10.3886/E204541V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary This paper studies women’s participation in innovative activities during the deep societal changes of twentieth century Italy. It accomplishes this by tracking female inventors among the more than 330,000 patents registered in Italy between 1861 and 1939. The resulting dataset allows to disaggregate women’s inventive activities across industries, provinces, and social backgrounds. Despite accounting for only 0.8% of total patents, the number of women patenting increased steadily from 1861 to 1939. The patenting growth has been comparable to that of male-only patents up to 1920 but started to slow down compared to that of men during Fascism. The quality of inventions registered by women was only slightly lower than men’s, and the gap was gradually reduced. Also, women patented in a wide variety of technological sectors. This suggests that entrepreneurial women were able to innovate, but that marriage and gender power relations prevented them to fully unleash their inventive potential., This paper studies women’s participation in innovative activities during the deep societal changes of twentieth century Italy. It accomplishes this by tracking female inventors among the more than 330,000 patents registered in Italy between 1861 and 1939. The resulting dataset allows to disaggregate women’s inventive activities across industries, provinces, and social backgrounds. Despite accounting for only 0.8% of total patents, the number of women patenting increased steadily from 1861 to 1939. The patenting growth has been comparable to that of male-only patents up to 1920 but started to slow down compared to that of men during Fascism. The quality of inventions registered by women was only slightly lower than men’s, and the gap was gradually reduced. Also, women patented in a wide variety of technological sectors. This suggests that entrepreneurial women were able to innovate, but that marriage and gender power relations prevented them to fully unleash their inventive potential.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) (2017YLBYZE)



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Release of this data has been delayed until 01/01/2026 at the request of the depositor.

Published Versions

V2 [2024-07-09]

V1 [2024-06-04]

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