The real cost of bias? 6,500 missed opportunities

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June 21, 2021

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Victoria’s Secret’s CMO leads its rebrand, writers remember Janet Malcolm, and a new study quantifies the consequences of bias. Have a productive Monday.
– Patent pending. What are the consequences of bias? It can sometimes be hard to quantify, but new research gives it a shot.
A new study in the journal Science follows the thread from who is awarded patents to what gets created. Researchers from Harvard Business School, IESE Business School, and McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management examined both how many patents are awarded to men and women—and what those patents are for.
Their analysis finds that women are more likely than men in the biomedical field to come up with new medications and technologies for women’s health. But men still receive a greater share of patents—which means society is likely missing out on inventions that could greatly improve women’s health and lives.
“If [women] are patenting less, what sort of inventions might we be missing?” coauthor Rembrand Koning says he wondered while reading about investor reluctance to discuss a smart breast pump.
ReportsSTAT News: “Although the percentage of biomedical patents held by women had risen from 6.3% to 16.2% in the last three decades, men still significantly outnumber women as patent holders and, in turn, health- and medicine-related inventions more often address men’s health. If there was gender parity, there would have been 6,500 more female-focused inventions during the time the researchers studied, according to their findings.”
That’s a pretty clear consequence of bias: 6,500 missed opportunities, and that’s only in biomedicine. This study shows the real world results of inequity and the cost of not rooting it out.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.

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