In the decades that followed, women inventors obtained patents in a range of fields, though their participation was concentrated in areas associated with domestic life and textiles — reflecting both the areas where women had the most direct experience and the areas where women’s inventions were taken most seriously by the male-dominated patent examining corps.

The proportion of patents granted to women remained small for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reflecting the combination of legal and social barriers that limited women’s participation in economic and professional life.

Married women in many states could not hold property in their own names until the Married Women’s Property Acts of the nineteenth century changed the law; without property rights, the concept of holding a patent was complicated.

Women who worked in male-dominated professional environments faced systematic exclusion and skepticism.