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Barack Obama

U.S. patent director launches 'All in STEM' campaign

Michelle K. Lee
Special for USA TODAY

Forty years ago, women accounted for just 3% of active duty officers serving in the United States Armed Forces. Today, nearly 17% of the officers leading our military and protecting our country are women.

President Barack Obama works with a middle-school student participating in an Hour of Code event to honor Computer Science Education Week at the White House last December.

Thirty-five years ago, no women sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, women occupy a third of the bench. Fifteen years ago, women were hard to find on presidential primary ballots. This season, women are prominent candidates for president in both major political parties.

Every year, stereotypes are broken and glass ceilings are shattered, as women across the country continue to defy historical convention and redefine normal. But our country is still struggling to achieve gender parity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions.

Women hold less than 25% of STEM jobs in the United States today, despite filling close to half of all jobs in the overall U.S. economy. Perhaps most shockingly, women have a 50% attrition rate in STEM careers during their first twelve years on the job, compared to only 20% of professional women in non-STEM fields.

As an MIT-trained engineer, a person who spent her entire career in high technology, and the first woman to lead the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the 225-plus year history since the founding of our patent system, I find these discrepancies glaring.

As the head of USPTO, I was disheartened to learn of a recent study that showed just how disparately women are represented in the innovation community. This particular study showed that women represented no more than 15% of all inventors and that at the current rate it will take another 140 years for women to obtain parity with their male inventor counterparts. That’s far too long to wait.

The lack of gender parity is not just a social issue, it is an economic imperative. The Department of Commerce has found that STEM jobs are being created at three times the rate of non-STEM positions, and the United States will need almost two million new engineering and computing professionals in the next seven years. At a time when our most innovative companies crave more technical talent, our nation cannot afford the status quo. We are operating at far less than our full potential in an increasingly competitive global economy. We need to get more girls into STEM education, and we need to empower more women in STEM professions.

All of us have a role to play in this effort.

Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Michelle K. Lee

At the USPTO, although we have a higher rate of women in our STEM positions than the national average, we recognize the need to do more. We launched an "All in STEM" initiative – to get more girls interested in STEM and encourage more women to pursue and flourish in STEM careers. We've partnered with Invent Now to run Camp Invention, an annual summer program that reaches more than 100,000 elementary school-aged kids every year, sparking in them a passion for design, creation and invention, and even to create a Girl Scout patch on intellectual property. In addition, we’re making sure that the thousands of talented STEM women at the USPTO are getting the support, mentorship, and advancement opportunities they need.

Together, we can empower and encourage girls and women in STEM so no innovator is left behind, and every possible perspective and ability is brought to bear on the pressing scientific and technical challenges of our times. Our country can afford no less.

While I am proud to serve as the first woman in the history of our country to head the USPTO, I yearn for a society where such firsts no longer exist. Our nation’s women have shown that they can serve ably in uniform, persuasively in the courtroom, and decisively in executive offices across the country. They should be leading on the front lines of innovation as well.

Michelle K. Lee is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, one the largest intellectual property offices in the world with almost 13,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3 billion. You can follow her campaign for closing the gender gap in STEM online through the hashtag #ALLinSTEM. 

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