Although women’s participation in innovation and entrepreneurship-related activities is increasing, it still lags significantly behind that of men. According to a report, at the current rate of progress, women are not expected to achieve parity in patenting until 2092. This paper attempts to understand the reasons for such disparities, their impact on innovation, and to discuss potential solutions to address these issues, particularly in the context of India, where innovation, entrepreneurship, and science and technology activities are increasingly being dominated by women. Tracing women’s participation historically in entrepreneurship and patenting ventures, the paper establishes that the increased participation of women in these ventures has a direct positive impact on families, society at large, and the economy. It then considers the barriers to entry that women face in entering these fields, which include insufficient access to capital, gender-based and cultural constraints -- particularly in a country like India, lack of technical and business knowledge, limited knowledge of and access to new markets, lack of access to support networks and mentorship, and lack of access to information and communication technologies, such as the Internet and social media.
The paper leads up to a round table discussion on Women and Innovation in India where an eminent panel deliberates on several issues, key being the career options for women in innovation and entrepreneurship in contemporary India, whether family firms are better facilitators of women in entrepreneurial and innovation related roles, whether women face greater challenges than their male counterparts in commercialising their ideas, how women fare in adopting novel routes to innovation, and the importance of governmental and industry interactions in facilitating an environment for increased participation of women in Indian innovation and entrepreneurship. The panel was chaired by Zorina Khan, Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College, London School of Economics (LSE) & National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and the panellists were Deepa Bachu, Co-Founder and CEO at Pensaar; Suparna Bhattacharya, Distinguished Technologist, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise; Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, Chairman & CEO at IKP Knowledge Park, India; Debjani Kapila, CoE Leader -- Patents and Analytics Center of Excellence GE Global Research, GE India Technology Centre; Kajoli Banerjee Krishnan, Principal Scientist, GE Global Research; and Leena Pishe Thomas, Founder, Global Business Inroads.
