Innovation and entrepreneurship are closely linked activities, both of which have potential to increase economic productivity and growth, and thereby ultimately improve social welfare. Given the substantial public investment in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health sciences research (STEM-H), taxpayers and their representatives are understandably concerned about the translational value of those investments on society and the economy, including potential disparities in benefits that accrue to individuals by gender, race and ethnicity.

This paper focuses on women who pursue graduate training in STEM-H fields, to identify and assess what financial, structural, and organizational factors might significantly discourage or facilitate women’s subsequent participation in scientific research occupations and STEM-H/innovation-based entrepreneurship.

Many STEM-H fields, particularly engineering, computer science and mathematics, and the physical sciences, are disproportionately male-dominated at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Although women’s participation in many STEM-H fields—including biomedical sciences, but also computer science and electrical engineering—has increased rapidly over the past decade, female STEM-H PhDs are still less likely than male STEM-H PhDs to apply for, receive, or commercialize patents, to receive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants to finance start-up costs, and to work in start-up firms or small businesses. Finally, rates of patenting and new firm starts also differ markedly across individual STEM-H fields, as does women’s relative representation among scientist-entrepreneurs.

Much of the prior literature has measured entrepreneurship via business ownership and self-employment. Here, we use a broader notion of participation in entrepreneurial ventures, considering women scientists’ participation in new firms founded in the past five years, with fewer than 100 employees. Our empirical analysis combines data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, NIH-NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in S&E Fields, Higher Education Research and Development survey, university-assigned patents counts derived from USPTO files, and finally AUTM technology transfer and licensing information. We use these data to compare measures of job satisfaction, benefits, and primary work activities for male and female scientist-entrepreneurs, examine differences across STEM-H fields in women’s staying in scientific research careers after graduating with a STEM-H PhD, and investigate relative participation of female faculty in consulting and patenting within their universities. Then, we consider differences in women’s graduate and postdoctoral institutional environments, in particular whether they are more or less likely to be trained or to work as academic faculty members in departments and universities with greater commercial focus, that is, where industry-funded R&D, patenting, or licensing are more common. If women scientists are more likely to be trained or to work as postdocs and faculty members in departments and universities with less commercial focus or with an institutional preference to keep innovations in-house (instead of supporting spinoff companies), these differences in women’s institutional environments may help to explain some of the observed gender discrepancy in STEM-H entrepreneurship.