Women Inventors in Italy, 1861-1939

This paper studies women’s participation in innovative activities during the deep societal changes of twentieth-century Italy. It does so by tracking female inventors among the more than 330,000 patents registered in Italy between 1861 and 1939. The resulting dataset allows to disaggregate women’s inventive activity across industries, provinces, and social backgrounds. Despite accounting for only 0.7% of total patents, the number of women patenting increased steadily from 1861 to 1939. Until 1920, the growth of female-linked patents was comparable to that of male-only patents, but started to slow down during Fascism. The quality of inventions registered by women was only slightly lower than that of men and the gap was gradually reduced. Women also patented in a wide variety of technological sectors. This suggests that entrepreneurial women were able to innovate, but that systemic barriers, particularly during the Fascist period, limited their inventive potential. Although legal restrictions on women’s autonomous business activity were lifted in 1919, societal expectations of marriage and work and the restrictive policies of the Fascist regime contributed to a decline in women’s patenting activity in the 1920s and 1930s, suggesting an intersection of gender dynamics and political climate in shaping female inventive activities.