In place of IPWatchdog’s CON2020, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IPWatchdog will host a series of free online programs throughout September.

Delicia Clarke will be part of this series, taking part in a roundtable discussion, “The Gender Gap: Addressing STEM Education, Funding & Inventorship,” which will be led Jessica Landacre, Executive Director of the Intellectual Property Owners Association.

The facts show us that the number of women inventors has quintupled since the 1970s, yet fewer than 20% of issued US patents have at least one woman inventor, fewer than 12% of US patent inventors are female and fewer than 8% of US patents list a woman as the primary inventor. Meanwhile, 36.3% of all businesses in the US are women-owned, but the annual venture capital funding going to startups with women founding teams has been hovering around 2–3% over the last 12 years. The questions that will be discussed in this roundtable are: What can and should be done to close the gap? What are the short and long-term solutions?