Abstract:

Universities have become an indispensable agent in national systems of innovation, play an important role when it comes to lead and promote the dissemination of knowledge and technology that contribute to industrial innovation. Today is increasingly recognized the importance of patents as a source of information and basis for the development of indicators of scientific production. The study of the patents constitutes an important information source of the invention and of the innovation. Patents are included in patent rights which protect the inventions. A patent is an industrial security that the State grants. It gives to the holder the right of preventing temporarily to other the manufacture, sale or the commercial use of the protected invention. The holder of a patent assumes the obligation of describing his invention in return for perceiving the right of using it exclusively or to transfer to others.
In this study we performed an analysis of the contribution and presence of women teachers in patents filed between 1998 and 2009 Galician university system in order to meet their participation and performance in scientific and technological research universities. We use a set of indicators to show the behavior of the production of patents and to obtain the data necessary to understand the role of women in this activity as a first step to detect possible gender inequalities in the scientific contribution.

Keywords:

scientific production, women university teachers, patents.