Lee Jong Wook, Jeon Eunji, Sohn So Young
Dept. of Industrial Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 8;19(8):e0305238. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0305238. eCollection 2024.
Majority customers of cosmetics are female. Would this imply a high proportion of inventors of cosmetics technology is female? Would the inventor's gender be related to the characteristics and quality of corresponding patent? This study tries to identify manifestation of gender equity in cosmetics technology in terms of patent application and grant, technical characteristics, and its performance. We apply topic modeling, zero-inflated Poisson regression, and survival analysis to patents related to cosmetics that were applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 1970 to 2016. The results show that women's participation in cosmetic inventions is becoming active and has experienced many changes in technical characteristics, but in terms of performance, it is still sluggish. This study is expected to contribute to deepening our understanding about gender issues in technology development.
大多数化妆品消费者为女性。这是否意味着化妆品技术发明者中女性占比很高？发明者的性别是否与相应专利的特征和质量相关？本研究试图从专利申请与授权、技术特征及其表现方面，识别化妆品技术中性别平等的表现。我们将主题建模、零膨胀泊松回归和生存分析应用于1970年至2016年向美国专利商标局申请的与化妆品相关的专利。结果表明，女性在化妆品发明中的参与度正变得积极，并且在技术特征方面经历了诸多变化，但在表现方面仍较为滞后。本研究有望有助于深化我们对技术发展中性别问题的理解。
