Powering Change: Women in Innovation and Creativity”, the theme of this year’s World Intellectual Property (IP) Day, reflects and celebrates the diverse innovative efforts made by women. The celebrations of the World IP Day began in 2000, when World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) decided to designate a World IP Day to address the perceived gap between IP as a business/legal concept and its relevance to people’s lives. Thereafter, April 26 was chosen as the date upon which the convention establishing the WIPO first entered into force in 1970. WIPO is a unique and specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) which is dedicated to developing a balanced and accessible IP system around the globe. It has also taken the task of rewarding creativity, stimulating innovation and contributing to economic development, while safeguarding the larger interest of the public. WIPO is the key agency which organises the IP Day in all its 191 member states. All the activities, events and campaigns that centre around each IP Day seek to spread people’s understanding and awareness of what IP exactly means. They also try to demonstrate how the global IP system fosters not only music, arts and entertainments, but also all products and technological innovations that help shape our planet. The underlying narratives of these events aim to open up the horizons of IP so as to move it from the exclusive closets of the legal eagles to the public domain.
Interestingly, this year, to celebrate and ideally to offer respect to all women innovators and creators, WIPO has paid tribute to the impeccable genius once demonstrated by Hollywood diva Hedy lamarr. She was known more for her superb acting talent than for her intellectual farsightedness. Her little known career of a successful inventor was either undervalued or rather overshadowed by her larger than life persona in Hollywood. This Austrian-born actor, who was considered as the most beautiful woman by her peers in Tinseltown in the 1940s-50s, had brought to the world a breakthrough in military technology and laid open the way for a new revolution in widely used contemporary communication systems, known as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. “She worked on her invention of an early form of Spread Spectrum Telecommunications, in which a signal is transmitted on a much broader bandwidth than the original, together with her Hollywood neighbour, the avant-garde composer George Antheil, through the summer of 1940” (Thorpe, 2017). lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) spoke candidly about her remarkable invention only in 1990, in an interview, one decade before her death. Fortunately, lamarr and Antheil were honoured with an Electronic Frontier Foundation Award only in 1998, after 50 years of their invention. Frequently referred to as the “Ecstasy Girl” of the yesteryears, lamarr once again came to limelight because of her death in 2000 and for the production of an interesting documentary by Alexandra Dean in November 2017. The innuendo of its title, known as “Bombshell: The Hedy lamarr Story” says it all about her electrifying on-screen roles and her inventions. And by deciding to screen this documentary on this World IP Day at WIPO Headquarters in Geneva, WIPO is going to remind us all the life and times of an iconic actor who was consistently underestimated.
Innovation is fast becoming the centre of economic advancement for nations. It can also be used as a potential factor in meeting global challenges in almost all fields. However, the capability to innovate and bring innovation successfully both to the local and global markets remains an uphill task for many nations. Apart from bottlenecks in power supply, transport and communication, availability of skilled manpower and a safe network of information technology, what most of the nations suffer from is partial or total neglect of women empowerment. And it finally leads to hardly any encouragement or involvement of the womenfolk in pursuing any innovative activity.
This year’s theme rightly signals more and more recognition of women entrepreneurs and innovators who are working tirelessly to bring something new to the global community. For women rights activists, it is already too late for the world to highlight the innovative efforts undertaken by women. Women are no more whippersnappers in the world of innovation. Once Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Succinctly, these prophetic words of legendary Franklin truly underlines why we need to adopt a more inclusive policy while moving towards the resurgence of a globally creative and innovative zone.
In fact, the ten unique principles set forth by Coalition for the Women’s Economic Empowerment and Equality (CWEEE) stressed on how the role of women could be focused for their development and for the welfare of humanity as a whole. In its first principle, it says, “leave no woman behind” which emphasises that improving women’s participation and productivity in the economy improves the well-being and sustained development of their communities and nations. While highlighting on many other crucial issues, the CWEEE brings to light the most sensible aspect of empowering a woman by saying that “Do no harm”. It must be pointed out here that non-violence being the foundation of humanitarianism, the State, the myriad of civil society organisations and most importantly the business houses should ensure the safety and security of women at work and outside. The very empowerment of women disrupts the status quo and it may create either temporary or permanent threat perceptions for the rest of the society. And hence, while bringing forward women, both the public and private run governance systems should see to it that adequate steps are taken to mitigate gender-based violence.
Nevertheless, the WIPO Policy on Gender Equality-2014 has come as a great relief to the womenfolk as the organisation for the first time stressed on gender equality and empowerment of women both within and outside it. The landmark policy decision released on August 5, 2014, says, “As the UN specialised agency dedicated to promoting innovation and creativity for economic, social and cultural development through the use of intellectual property (IP), the WIPO is committed to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women within its mandate and in line with the commitments of the UN, including those expressed in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Economic and Social Council Agreed Conclusions 1997/2 (A/52/3), Millennium Development Goals (2000) and the UN System-Wide Policy on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (CEB/2006/2).”
These commitments simply recognise the fact that economic, social and cultural development cannot be realised unless there is gender equality and women empowerment. This policy further indicates gender mainstreaming in WIPO’s policies and programmes and gender equality at its workplaces. In the meantime, WIPO has started its own campaign called “Bend the Trend” to make gender parity a reality within the organisation. A study of WIPO Assemblies’ participants from member states by gender from 1980-2016 shows that the organisation itself will have to wait for another 17 years i.e. 2035, to reach gender equality among member states. It has been recorded that WIPO has taken 36 years to get to 36 per cent participation of women delegates at its Assemblies since its inception. But then WIPO is becoming more ambitious to achieve the same target by 2030.
Another major concern today is the rise of inequality in the payment to men and women. It is very strange that women around the globe are earning less than men for work of equal value. For example, on average, women in the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region earn only 81.1 cents for that of Euro men. Strangely, this gender pay gap continues despite the recognition of the principle of equal remuneration.
At the core of the problem of under representation or pay disparity lies with a governance system that does not support women on many fronts. What we need is a reform agenda. And it has been adopted by many countries to bring in more women into workforce and to the forefront of policy making. It has long been realised that Government policies can support innovation by continually reforming and updating the regulatory and institutional framework within the parameters of which innovative activity takes place. An OECD work named “Innovation and Growth-Rationale for an Innovative Strategy” highlights that “In this context, reforms are needed to make public policy and regulatory framework more conducive to innovation in a range of policy areas from the general business environment, especially in the services, particularly in the network industries to international trade and international investment, financial markets and labour markets, and education”. But the fear is that the obstacles that women confront from reaching the top are not only about changing policy making but are rather more prosaic in perspective. Consciously or unconsciously, women are simply made a category at every sphere of life and living. For professional growth of a girl child, we need to change our education system wherein they all would be portrayed as equally important, strong and respectable along with boys. Giving opportunities to handful of girls or women can’t change status and capabilities the women.
At times opportunities galore, but the environment around is not conducive for a girl child’s career. Women in most of the developing societies face existential threat, besides being barred by lack of capital and family pressure to take up household responsibilities. It is well accepted that with globalisation women along with men have crossed many traditional frontiers and achieved laurels across the world. But then this would not be enough to encourage many more to take up entrepreneurial ventures and leadership in public life.
Again a dense web of debates raises the point whether women are considered only as the passive beneficiaries of inventive flame. Grappling with the flows and subjectivities in a globalised world, some scholars such as Francesca Bray opine that “the modernist association of technology with masculinity translates into everyday experiences of gender, historical narratives, employment practices, education and design of new technologies and the distribution of power across a global society in which technology is seen as the driving force of progress”. As globalisation will most certainly going to sustain, either in one or the other form, the challenges for women innovators are likely to increase in the coming decades. With the World IP Day completing its 18 years of celebrations since its inception in 2000, it has raised awareness about IP and the constituent rights surrounding it. The womenfolk must steer its creative genius to various emerging fields so as to contribute more and to register gender equality in the days to come.
Despite having all the odds on the road ahead, it is time for women to reach the stars and compete equally with men in all fields. As the world is becoming flatter and flatter every passing day, women need to wade through the traditional barriers and come forward. She can be a lamarr, Maryam Mirzakhani, lata Mangeshkar, Madonna, Celine Dion or a revered Mother Teresa. She needs to fight her own battle, first against herself and then against society. It’s all about struggling to win over a mindset. While creativity is thinking about new things, innovation is doing purely new things. Therefore, challenges are bound to rise. On this World IP Day, to instill and inspire millions of women to become innovators and creators, once again we reiterate what philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” So move on. let the world get enlightened, encouraged and empowered by a brand new league of women innovators!
(The writer is an expert on international affairs)
