As dyed-in-the wool STEM professional women of all stripes know, much to our surprise a funny thing’s been happening on the way to the patent office: Women are going missing as inventors. According to a February report by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), women are today’s “lost Einsteins.” Indeed, one of the report’s findings is particularly damning: “Gains in female participation in science and engineering occupations and entrepreneurship are not leading to broad increases in female patent inventors (emphasis added).”
