Women inventors in Canada: research and intervention

What is an inventor or an invention? In this essay, we use the definition of the Canadian Patent Act, which considers a patentable invention to be a new or improved product or process or a new application of an existing product or process. An invention must be technically feasible - it must -"work" - and it must be novel enough so as not to be an "obvious" extension of a previous invention. Book chapter pub type

RACHELLE SENDER BEAUCHAMP and SUSAN A.' MCDANIEL' Women~ Invento'rsinCanada: , Research 'and Intervention ~ " What is an inventor or 'an invention? In this essay, we use the definition of the Canadian Patent Act, which considers a patentable inventionto be a new or improved product or processor anew application6fan existing product or process. An invention "musibe technically feasible. - it must "work" - and it must b~' novefeiiough so as not to be an' "obvious" extension of a previous mvention., .. '. .' In this essaywe only consider pai~ntable inventions, because this is how the term is widely used, bothin'aca"deme, and in business and governmerit. Most scholars who'snidyinventions and inventors rely exclusively on patent offiCe data. Similarly,ecoI1omists and statisticians generally use such data to measure the level of innovation in a given country. . '.- However, there are some ambiguities and difficulties in defining invention, which should be recognized at the outset. In particular, the line between "invention" and. "discovery" (the· uncovering of pre~(!:x­isting knowledge) is often a fuzzy one. As any"scientist can attest, the two are, in practice, inextricably linked;'A new discovery, such as the structure Of'DNA, is dependent: on many inventions, such as x-ray diffraction instrumentation, and~ Ji -tu~, generates other inventions. :':.;In· recent years, the legal definition of invention has been greatly . . ~ened,and this has further eroded the distinction between inven-md discovery. For example, when one of us (R.S.B.) was a WOMEN INVENTORS IN CANADA graduate student in molecular biology in the lateI960s, bacterial mutants were considered "discoveries." Today, such bacteria, arid even fragments of their DNA, are routinely patented. In the United States, piants and"ariimals (mice) are patentable in some cases, as are drugs~ ," In this essay, we have used the term invention in the new and broader sense. Some of the examples used may be on the "fuzzy border'~ • between invention and discovery, but we believe that all are, arguably, patentable by today's criteria.' , In Canada, the stereotypical inventor is an eccentric man tinkering alone in an ill-equipped basement laboratory or garage workshop on 'an idea thai'might never see the light of day. The inventor is an outsider, 'someone not totally accepted or acceptable, a person whose creativity 'refuses to b~:'channeled into more desirable or familiar directions. If the male inventor is something of a pariah, the female inventor bears a double stigma, both as an inventor and as a woman. According to most of the literature on inventors, as well as the popular perception; women are not supposed to invent at all,! Clearly, women and their inventions have received little attention in history books or the news media. With the kcreasing scholarship" ill feminist history, however, some fasCinating examples of women's iliventions are now coming to lignt.2 a'rie stUdy'suggests that prehistoric women were inventors, in that "g~the~ing foodwas an early critical invention and an important step in the divergence of the hominid line."3 This was largely women's ~ork. Similarly, women have" been credited with developing the earliest dorriesticated'plants.4,',:~' ,. ".' " " ,',Evenin historical times, womenw~'reoften "hidden': inv~ntcirs. For either legal or commercial reasons, bec~lUse they could n()t "owu"a .parent,'ofcbecause they'felt that a'patent in a w0Il'l:an's name would 'l.,not be taken'seriously,S ",omen oft~n'did not patent in"their own names; ;:::~~F6~ this reason, the mi~ber, of pa'ielits listing a womanas inventor is ;' "probably' considerably smaller thah':the actual numbe~ of~omen inventor's.';Nevertheless, patent~()ffi~erecords are" ov~r~ll, the best :;~~::~,)sourcesavailable for identifying\{,pmen inventors:, , t" In reviewirl'g such records, it i; clear that inventions by women, , frequently reflect the necessities of womens' lives, for exa ' on dishwashers, sewing machines, irons6 and beds.7 j sobering reflection on women's lot in life is the large nl pan patents. , BEAUCHAMP AND MCDANIEL Rachel Zimmerman, 17, of LOIIdori; Ontario~ inventor of a computer for the handicapped. Courtesy Women Inventors Project. 306 WOMEN INVENTORS -IN CANADA But women's inventions are by no-means confined to the domestic sphere. According to Stanley,S 20 percent of the machines patented oy women in the United States betWeen 1790 and 1888 were non-domestic in application, for example, an apparatus for raising sunken vehicles, a steam generator, and a pump. -' " Women have been particularly important inventors and innovators in the fields of biochemistry and' pharmacology. Prehistoric'women developed many herbal remedies/ rand mediaeval peasant women bound mouldy bread over wounds centuries before Alexander Fleming discovered that a substance produced by the Penicillium mould killed bacteria.1o To this day, women physicians and scientists continue to make important contributions' in the biomedical area.' Indeed, of the 10 Nobel prizes awarded to women in science, five have been in physiology and medicine, with· Rosalyn Yalow, the inventor of the radioimmunoassay, and Gertrude B. Elion, the co-inventor of a variety of therapeutic drugs, being two notable recent recipi~nt~.:' As these examples illustrate, women obviously have the drive, cre­ativity, and ability to invent successfully, but there are still relatively few women anywhere who receive patents on their inventions. Accord­ing to the Canadian Patent Office, less than one percent of Canadians receiving a Canadian patent are women; in the 1988-89 fiscal year, 99 out of 17,245 (0.6%) of the patents issued were issued to women. II In the United States, the figure is somewhat higher; approximately eight percent of American patents have the name of a woman as inventor. U In both cases, the figures are rough approximations based on guesses as to the gender of inventors, as neither patent office keeps records of the gender of patent holders. ~.' ' Together with our colleagues:we 'set out to explore the reasons for the paucity of women inventors; and to develop an'intervention program which would encourage 'innovative Canadian~women .to develop their ideas. In this essay, we 'review our research-'on the li~es of contemporary Canadian women inventors. What a.re the'challenges and barriers these women face,_ arid how do social and g~nder struc­tures impinge on their lives so'a's~to render them invisible; .or to denigrate their work? Mter attempting to answer these questions, we discuss the experience of the Women Inventors Project in helping, women inventors to surmount some of the obstacles. BEAUCHAMP .. AND / MCDANIEL Background A social structure that undermines the legitimacy of women's experi­ences as. innovators ()verwhelms tli~ attributes of any individual woman iriventoi.13When the dominant society focusses on men, men's ideas, and men's unde!standing of the world, we are given "a one-sided standpoint [that] comes to be seen as natural, obvious and general."14 A deep-seated sexist ideology, that says that only what men do mattersl5 has profound and negative effects on women. It also structures society's reaction to women's creativity and innovation, making their achieve­ments insignificant or'invisible. Women who come into,work or professions that have been estab­lished and shaped by men in both content and form, tend to be seen as inadequate in comparison to men. They are immigrants to foreign cultures. Science and technology are the epitomy of such a male culture. As Evelyn Fox Kellerl6 ~nd many others have pointed out, science was, from its beginnings, conceptualized as a specifically masculine endeav­our - the quest for simple and often hierarchical relationships, the search for mastery over natUre (the latter often seen in feminine terms), and the distant, obJectivJ, and rational stance of the scientist. Women scientists, such as Rosalind Franklirl in DNA research,17 Ursula Franklin 4t metallurgy, Lyrui'Marguliesin evolutionary biology, Barbara Mc­Clintock in genetics,I8 Barbara Wright in embryology, and Ruth Hub­bard inbiology of gender, who have provided innovative conceptual­izations of scientific problems, have h~d an uphill battle to gain acceptance. 'Much of the literature (by men) implies that women are incapable of high~level creativity. it is argued that women are biologically pre­vented from f~llde~eloimient of creativity . beca~se of their natures, which are seen to centre on reproduction and childrearing. Given such pressure's; it is' not surprising that women often rechannel their creative urges'in\6, mo~~ ac~eptabJe forms. "One cannot help but wonder how much female creativity'is, and has been, channelled into ... creative living, ranging all the way from interior decoration (sometimes called nest makirig) to ho~, to live for a month on an income that leaves t nothing for food. "I9 creativity associated with personal home decoration and per­? pearance is less esteemed in our society than creativity which WOMEN INVENTORS,' IN ' CANADA' designs new machines or produces esthetic works for public consump: tion."20 As Cockburn (1986) suggests, women havelargeiy been ex­cluded from the' crucial role of t061-mak~r, and thus often lack the technical expertise so valued in the public realm. Domestic creativity is discounted, as is women's creativity in' the more public wo~lds of science and art. ," A Study of Contemporary Women Inventors ' For the purpose of this study, we interviewed 21 women who had registered their inventions for an assessment by the Canadian Indus­trial Innovation Centre in Waterloo. Most were "independent" inven­tors, who worked on their inventions at home, and most were at an early stage in developing their ideas - they had not yet marketed or even patented their inventions.lI . . , We employed an op~n-ended interView "schedule, inwhich'~e asked about the process6finventing in the.women's own terms, how and why they got into it: how they saw themselves and how'others reacted, how they dealt .with the reaction of others, the challenges they faced as inventors, and ~he multiple roles they occupied. , The 21 women who participated in the study were diverse in every " respect. They ranged in age from 24 to 66, with a mean age of 42.6. ': Sixty-one percent (13) of the respondents had had some p6st-secolldary education, but some (10%) had had only grade II. M~~t of them (76.2 %) were married at the time of the}nterview, with:equal numbers cohabiting, divorced, and widowed. Ten percent were never married. Two-thirds of th~iespondents had chlldren, while~o,perceJlt (4) did not. For three additional respondents, it was not known whether or not they had children. At the timethe',women were in;olvecl in inventing, 43 percent (9) had children still at home. The majority of respondents (76%) were employed outside the home at thetimeof the interview, with the remainder seeing theIl!selV'es as homemakers, or not in the labour force. ,The la'tter category includes a student, a retired person, and a person'o~ long-term dis~bility. The range of o~c~patioT'c represented was impressive: a food services worker, sales cle~ks, a bar teller, an artist, a singer, a business consultant, a marketing analyst, special education teacher, a university professor, a teaching assista. •• at a university, and a nursing supervisor. BEAUCHAMP-AND MCDANIEL ":' Tables 1 and 2 reveal sollie 'of the complexities involved for our sample in.the process of invention. For the vast majority of women (81% plus) we interviewed, inventing was done at home (Table I). This should not be interpreted as meaning. that their inventions were all domestic, however. Table i shows the tremendous diversity in types of inventions on which-the women worked. One third of them, however, were involved in working on inventions to improve'domestic life. The most striking finding of the study was the fact that the women inventors interviewed had so internalized the myth that women are not inventors that they denied their oWn experience. Only a small percent­age (23 %) would label themselves, as inventors; a typical comment was, "I would n~t say that I was an illve~tor. My invention was an 'out of the blue' sort ofthing. In~entors ~~e~tea lot of things that are more " " , :1.,< ~"' .~ - "" techniCal than mine." Most strongly denigrated their work, calling it "SillY"()f '~just making do.';:They kept their inventing quiet, "J hav~ neve;toidanyone that I in~e~t onthe side .... " In striking contrast was their appreciation of others: they were quick to' l3bel the men in their lives (father, husband; son) as inventors. It appears. that many of these 'negative perceptions of the women's own experience are tied to-the invisibility and denigration of home­based wo;k hI' general, and' the i~ck of a recognized connection between the pr~v:ate realm of the hOll1e'andthe public sphere, where events of "importance'; are seen to'tririspire. Inventing is considered by many of the, women to be an extension of the homemaker's role, and this conIlection is reinforced hy the fact that a majority of their inventions (67.50/0 of;the women contacting the Jnnovatiori Centre) were in the "pers'onal!household" category, as compared with i8 percent for inven-tions by males; -" -;. -", Therew~r~ also other common elements in the women's experience~. A majorbarrierformostwas the financial one. Developing an inven­tion is usu:;tlly very costly: North American patents'alone costat least $5,ooo,arid that is just the sia'rCIri addition to the barriers faced by male.inventors in raising this klrid 6f money, women inventors also face gerid~r':"related obstacles. For example, several studies of Canadian women entrepreneurs have found that women make heavy use of their _ oWItfinances in business start-ups, because they have difficulty in '­getting funding elsewhere.21- Time is also a gender-specific problem for women inventors; in juggling the demands of homemaking and childcare with work outside 310 WOMEN INVENTORS IN CANADA the home and with mventing, many women were' coping with three full-time jobs. The difficulty is not only a general lack of time, but also the lack of quiet time for' thinking and creating. A typical comment was, "it's hard .... not to be left bymyself. You kriow, to really do what I want to do. I'm not just free as the breeze."' Another challenge, again related to working at home, was isolation. Many inventors lacked family support ("My husband was the greatest doubter, definitely"), and almost all lacked a peer group, for advice and moral support, and the business and professional contacts needed to develop their ideas. In the words of one, "I'd say contacts [were the biggest problem]. I have the idea but I don't kriow'who would have the technology, who would have the knowledge of who else I should contact. I think it's just getting over thatstiIff ... because this is one that stalled me." Many expressed the view that they didn't kriow where to start. Most felt that "more women would invent if they kriew of other women inventors." The Women Inventors Project In the past decade, a, variety of educational programs designed to encourage young women to continue with math and science courses in high school and enter "non-traditional" occupations have been instituted. The Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley, has been a pioneer in this work, but many Canadian school boards have been activeas welJ.23 ,,' ' ' Unfortunately, there is much less programming available for adult women involved or interested in "non~tra(litional" fields. Prior to the inception of the Women In~entors Pr~)eci: no one' had ever tried to develop it program for ~()Il1en invento~s; even though'the Canadian government (and many other groups}.have professed it strong interest in encouraging innovation~ and even though it was clear that existing support programs for inventors (suc~ as'the Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre in Waterloo) were 110t reaching women effectively. In fact, historically, only five percent of the Innovation Centre's clientele had been female. " As mentioned already, our interviews with women inventors had clearly identified concerns and problems common to most. Some of these, including isolation, lack of self confidence, and the need for 311 BEAUCHAMP AND MCDANIEL information and referrals toreliable professionals, appeared amenable to an intervention program~ Therefore, one of us (R...S.B.), together with Lisa Avedon, designed an educational and support program for women inventors. The organization which resulted' -the Women Inventors Project -beganoperations in November, 1986, with funding from the federal and provincial governments. It is thefirst program in North America aimed specifically at women inventors. The· Project's initial mailing'list of less than 100 was comprised of women inventors who were· either· clients of the Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre in Waterloo;- or holders of a Canadian patent. Through . personal referrals'" and media, publicity, that. number has grown: as of jaimary, 1989, there were over one thousand inventors on the mailing list, and about 250 women have attended "one or more workshops sponsored or co-sponsored by the Project: The women involved with the Women Inventors Project have devel­oped a wide variety of inventions, including a novel three-way mirror for applying eye make-up or contact lenses, an electroniC car mileage recorder, a collapsible prawn tnip, a pacifier holder, and artificial intelligence software (see"summary in Table 2). In addition to the work with adult women described here, the Project has developed and tested a workshop on inventing for grade 10 girls. Inventions by students have included asolar-heatedrabbif,hutch,a folder for organizing sheet music, and a handbag organizer."'" _ To help women inventors arid innovators overcome the barriers they encountered, the Women Inventors Project designed a workshop which fills a, three:'day period, or which ·can be broken down into shorter workshop· units: The content illcllldes information and resource ma­terials .rele~ant to the launching of an invention and information on networkillg strategies. The training'format was refined in two three­day programs for 51 women from across the country, all at some point in the invention process. '.' The women inventors who participated in the Project's initial three­day workshops found that they learned and worked most effectively when there were opportunities'to'relate personally to 'workshop lead­ers, develop a sense of community with other women ill the group, and see the relevance of workshop materials to their personal projects. This is a relational"leaming style.14 In order to enhance the quality of the training~the"workshops were especially designed to include time for one-on-one conversing between workshop leaders and participants, 312 WOMEN INVENTORS IN CANADA , hands-'on prototYpe building, role models the women could relate to, displays of the women's inventions, and brainstorming sitUations from the' women's 'own experience. Much peer learning::"':": learning from each: other's experience - ,-occurred during the training; some of the women found this to be the most stimulating part of the' sessions., Iri ~f~llo~-up study of workshop participants, ca~riedout about a year later, all'the women interviewed accorded high scores to 'the training recei~ed.2s As compared to the women inventors in the earlier study, there was a dramatic difference in self-perception. While over 80 percent of me original sample had poor self confidence (as evinced by the fact that they sawtheir own "lack of ability" as a major barrier), 83 percent of the workshop participants rated their self-confidence as good or ve'ry good. ' - In order to widely disseminate the workshop experience, the infor­mation'covered and the experiences of the participants themselves, were summarized and published as an inventors' manual, The Book for Women Who Inventor Want To. Unlike most material for inven­tors~ the, book was written simply and clearly, using non-sexist lan­guage. Interestiri.gly, we have found that demystifying technology for women alsO makes it more accessible to many men, as indicated by th~ fact that we ha'Ve sold many books to, and have had very favourable feedback {ioIn, male inventors. .' , 'In parallel with the distribution of the book, the Projecthas helped to'establishnetworks of women inventors in several Canadian citie's. )'hese iietWo~ks provide "moral" support for otherwisei~olated inveh- ,. tors,'run workshops, and even work on inventions ~s ac~l1ective. The Project also, publishes a newsletter for inventors, to enable women in more' isolated communities to keep up to date; it also works with teenagegir ls~" Conclusion In oUf research' into the lives of contemporary women inventors, we, ;;:.:?,havefoundthat they face many of the same obstacles and barriers as ";-, do women in other male-dominated professions. They must balanc the constraints of primary responsibility for home and family wit careers, the parameters of which are established by men, for men. The face challenges in being taken seriously by their families, friends, an 313 BEAUCHAMP AND MCDANIEL neighbours. Theyfeelthe stigma of being in a field that is unusual in general, but particularly so for women. They are reluctant to see themselves as inventors, because they experience ghettoization of their :work into areas ,thought to be appropriate for-women. In 'short, meshing the roles of inventor, mother, and worker is far from straight­forward.',," A further problem faced by many women inventors is the isolation of working at home without colleagues for support and companion­ship. As with housework, this isolation means that women inventors lack a peer group by which to measure their accomplishments. They also lack business and'professional contacts to help theirinventions come to fruition. Home':'based inventors may feel the particular sense of alienation from the public sphere that has characterized homemak- , ers for decades.' Yet, home~based cre~tive work has its positi~e aspeCts as well. Possibilities exist for balancing paid work with family responsibilities that so far are few in the workplace. The late 1980s was a time of rapid growth in a number of hofne-based industries~ although this work is often poorly, paid with' limited opportunities for the"workers to help each other to organize. The 1980s saw a rather dramatic growth in the numbers of, successful- women entreprenellrs and, business people, many of w!J'om work out of their homes. Many new women entrepre­neurs find this work a viable option to the lack of opportunity women face as salaried workers. It may be that women inveiuors could increase in numbers in the future for some of the same reasons that have contributed to the' inc~eas~in women entrepreneil~s.'Irideed, many of the most successful women inventors are entrepreneurs' as well-they have takentheirowrl products to market.26 Unlike 'many women ,involved with science and tecilhology, they are in the fortunate position of beingablelto work; at least to some extent, autonomously and outside of male-dominated organizational hierarchies. ' Women inventors may be pioneers in another, sense, as well. They provide one model'of women coping independently,withtechnology, and hint at the type of transfoIm'ation process suggest~dby Franklin/7 Menzies/8 and others. As one woman inventor, Deborah New, says, "I went to an engineering department in Cambridge but they couldn't , work on it (my in~ention) for me. So I decided to go ahead and learn enough electronics to do it myself. And that's where it became a reality, on my kitchen table at home." "".' "~ -;' Home Work Home and \Vork Unknown '(T = 21) 'WOMEN, INVENTORS IN CANADA Table I: Location of Inventing PERCENT 81 "":7: .:;. IO 5 ,'" 5 " NUMBER 17 2 Table 2: Women's Inventions, By Category , cue WIP" GROUP GROUP ., PERCENT 'NUMBER PERCENT , Environniental 5 I Recreational' 14 3 17 Teaching Aid "10 2 9 Medical 10 2 17 DomesticlPersonal 33 7 30 Chemical 5 I 4 ElectronidComputer .. 13 Mechanical -, 9 Not Known. 24 5 -'c, " .. i' Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre, Waterloo. T = 21. NUMBER 4 2 4 7 I 3 2 '2 Women Invelltors Project (group attending the Project's first workshop). T= 23.