Gender homophily and diversity in patenting: academic and corporate assignees in inventor’s collaborations

Understanding how gender dynamics shape inter-organizational collaboration is critical to addressing persistent inequalities in innovation systems. This study examines the gender composition of patenting teams and the organizational configuration of patent assignees across academic and corporate institutions. Drawing on over 100,000 U.S. patents (2000–2015), we explore how the share of women coinventors in a patent is associated with collaborations within a single academic organization or across multiple partners. Building on the literature on gender homophily, inequality in scientific teams, female participation in academia, and gender differences in professional networks, we test whether the share of female inventors relates to the likelihood that a patent involves multiple academic and corporate assignees. Our results show that modest increases in women’s participation broaden academic collaboration, consistent with the benefits of heterophily, whereas teams with higher female representation tend to display narrower networks and less inter-organizational engagement. Additionally, higher shares of women inventors are consistently associated with a lower likelihood of including corporate partners. Nonetheless, in recent years the probability of producing collaborative patents has increased for both homogeneous (multiple universities) and heterogeneous (university-company) collaborations at all levels of female participation. These findings illustrate how gendered team structures shape organizational linkages in innovation.