67. The Patent Gap

[0] From APM, American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace.

[1] Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Rizdahl.

[2] Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio, that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co -author of the books and the blog of the same name.

[3] It is the hidden side of everything.

[4] Dubner, welcome back.

[5] Thank you, Kai.

[6] I want to talk to you about this economic buzzword these days, innovation.

[7] You know, we've got to innovate our...

[8] way back to greatness.

[9] Do you know who's got the most room for improvement in the innovation field?

[10] You and me, baby.

[11] Well, that's the sad truth, isn't it?

[12] But if you look at the data on patents, okay, patent filing, it turns out that women are responsible for only about seven and a half percent of all patents filed.

[13] I mean, that's amazing.

[14] That's at least 93 -something percent for men.

[15] That's ridiculous.

[16] Well, 92 -something, but, you know, I know math is not your strong suit.

[17] I'm a math guy.

[18] Sorry.

[19] It has to be science and engineering.

[20] right?

[21] And the lack of women they're in?

[22] Yeah, that's a very sensible first thought.

[23] Not a bad one, Kai.

[24] You're doing better.

[25] But it's a surprising fact.

[26] The fact is that even women with science and engineering degrees aren't much more likely to file a patent than women with other degrees.

[27] Now, Jenny Hunt, who's an economist at Rutgers, she says that one big factor is that you just don't find a lot of women in the kind of sweet spot jobs within an industry that lead to a lot of patent filing.

[28] Men are more likely to be in jobs involving design work or development work, so the D and the R &D.

[29] And even within given fields of study, women are less likely to be in those jobs, and that also reduces their patenting.

[30] Now, you know, this idea, Kai, actually explains a lot of the male -female wage gap across the board in different industries, whether it's business or medicine or education.

[31] Women end up gravitating toward the lower -paying jobs within those fields.

[32] So, you know, say a general practice physician versus a surgeon.

[33] Yeah, well, all right.

[34] So is that women being steered away from those jobs?

[35] Is that subtle discrimination or is it women making the career and family choice that men seldom make?

[36] I mean, there's a lot going on, right?

[37] It is all of the above, certainly, probably most of the latter.

[38] A lot of it is by choice, but not all of this.

[39] Some of it is discrimination.

[40] But the bigger point that Jenny Hunt is making about the patent data is that by having such a low rate of female patenting, Even within the science and engineering fields, the U .S. is missing an opportunity.

[41] So she argues that closing the male -female patenting gap in science and engineering would have a dramatic effect on the economy, that it might lift GDP per capita by as much as 2 .7 percent.

[42] Wow, which is a huge jump, given when the economy is growing these days or not, right?

[43] Massive.

[44] How do we get there?

[45] It's interesting.

[46] There's a lot of research showing that men are bigger risk takers than women.

[47] Now, I talked to an economics professor in Britain.

[48] Her name is Allison Booth, and she had cooked up an experiment to look into this male -female risk gap.

[49] She randomly assigned a bunch of first -year economics students to either single -sex classes or co -ed classes.

[50] So there were all -female groups, all male groups, and mixed, all randomly selected.

[51] Then she had each of the students take a test to determine their baseline level of risk aversion.

[52] And then after eight weeks of class, she gave all.

[53] all the students the same test, and here's what she learned.

[54] We found that the girls who'd been in single -sex groups all the way through the term were behaving the same as the boys who were in single -sex groups.

[55] There was only the girls who were in the co -educational groups who were making fewer risky choices.

[56] That's amazing.

[57] Two months away from boys or men and women want more risk.

[58] Women seem to compete better when they're competing against women.

[59] And once you bring men into the equation, they kind of dial it down a little bit.

[60] That's what we're seeing in a lot of the research.

[61] That's wild.

[62] So get me back to patents and innovation.

[63] How do we get there?

[64] Well, you know, here's one thought.

[65] If I'm a Google or a GE or the U .S. government and I truly want to maximize my resources, really get the most out of all my employees, I might try something that's so old -fashioned that it'll strike a lot of people is truly repugnant.

[66] I might actually segregate my workforce.

[67] I might actually let my sharpest women set up shop separately away from the men and just see what kind of wonderful stuff they can produce on their own.

[68] You know, I was going to give you a hard time, but it'd be actually interesting.

[69] I don't know.

[70] Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics .com, is the website.

[71] We'll see in a couple of weeks.

[72] Okay, Kai.

[73] Thanks very much.