Female Inventorship in Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic

Abstract Based on two newly compiled patent databases, we investigate the role of female inventors in two authoritarian regimes: Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). We find that the women inventor rate (WIR) was very low under the Nazi regime. Based on the sample of patents used in this article, we estimate that female inventors accounted for less than 2 percent of all patents in this period. This figure reflects the low WIR in previous periods but may be also driven by various policy measures of the Nazi regime. In the GDR, the WIR was even lower in the 1950s, but it increased to about 19 percent in the 1980s. A plausible reason for this development is the GDR’s women’s policy, which, among other things, tried to integrate women into universities and R&D departments of state-owned enterprises, thus promoting female inventorship.