Development agendas are greatly influenced by comparative indices. The Global Innovation Index (GII) is a canonical reference for investors, governments, and donors who seek to understand which countries are pushing innovation. However, the GII and the authority it has created on innovation, also makes its blind spots consequential. It is essential to put forth a gendered critique of the index and the parameters it adopts for innovation. 

The GII’s dominant metrics including patents, corporate R&D intensity, and high-tech trade are not universally applicable. They are systematically skewed to represent a more formal and capital-intensive domain that remains predominantly male. This results in innovation being misrepresented in most heterogeneous societies, an underrepresentation of women’s contributions and an undervaluation of social and frugal innovations that are drivers of resilience in the Global South.  

The entire ecosystem of codified indices and innovation including the GII’s present indicators obscure women’s innovative labour and distorts policy priorities in Southeast Asia. 

In a region where most of its innovation occurs in MSMEs and in community settings - a formal, patent-centred lens of understanding innovation can lead to funds being misdirected, talent being overlooked and a very limited understanding of digital transformations in such societies.  

A practical calibration is only possible with the inclusion of gender-disaggregated measurements and frugal innovation within the GII framework. The pairing for such measurements with institutional incentives could lead to a more equitable innovation landscape. 

How the GII functions and its Limitations

The GII evaluates innovation using a broad range of metrics. These are grouped into seven key pillars: Innovation Inputs, which include institutions, human capital, infrastructure, market sophistication, and business sophistication; and Innovation Outputs – including knowledge and technology outputs, as well as creative outputs. These pillars are believed to offer a detailed view of how economies foster, sustain, and translate innovation into real-world results. The architecture appears to be fairly neutral but espouses male-dominated and formal setups. This results in gendered asymmetries being amplified. Measurements become gatekeepers - what can be counted gets rewarded. Two biases follow from this:

Firstly, formalism elevates the metrics as observed in corporate R&D, patenting and exportable technologies - these are domains where structural barriers to entry, advancement and ownership exist. Secondly, visibility biases exist that make community-based interventions and informal-sector innovations invisible or redundant. These innovations do not produce patents or venture capital and thus fail to appear in the index. 

While creative goods and non-patented outputs are included in the index, weighting and data availability still favour codified IP, formal and capital-intensive activities. Even within the GII’s framework the presence of strong ‘inputs’ does not translate into proportionate ‘outputs. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) which reviews the GII found that while there is a general link between investments and results, it is often uneven. While some countries have high levels of inputs they do not necessarily turn into outputs. Other countries manage to do more with less. 

The mismatch or rank discrepancy is an indicator that while making high investments or institutional building would not translate to innovative success. When gender is applied to this understanding, it helps explain why women’s participation and rewards in the domain remain low even though a country’s overall scores could show improvement. This is because the benefits of these inputs or the structural systems in place are gendered and unequal. 

The Invisibilisation of Gender in Data

Gender has emerged as a structural and conceptual variable and not a demographic problem. It is not simply the headcount of women that is numerically lesser but also the roles and functions they often perform. Women could be present in research teams but in what roles and what outcomes are being produced remains invisible. They remain absent as principal investigators, laboratory heads, intellectual property owners and patent holders. Intersectionality further complicated the gaps - class, ethnicity, urban/rural spatial divides are also glossed over to create a composite marker of innovation. 

Informal innovations are a critical blind spot in this system. Across Southeast Asia, women adapt processes, work on redesigning products and create new networks of service that work in both informal and formal settings - from healthcare, household energy and market logistics. The informal contributions made by women are rarely included in formal R&D considerations despite their cumulative effects being deeply transformative. When considering the digital sphere, a similar distortion can be understood. Connectivity is often seen as a stand in for capability, but it must be noted that access does not necessarily mean agency. Without detailed understanding of how devices are used, what level of digital skills are present and online safety protocols, mere presence of devices and connections is seen as empowerment. Simply counting women does not necessarily mean a structural shift in the roles and decision-making power meeting remains unchanged. 

What the Numbers Say?

Patent data offer a blunt illustration of the gap. As per World Intellectual Property Organisation’s World Intellectual Property Indicators Report (2024), in 2023, women made up 17.7 per cent of all inventors listed in published Patent Cooperation Treaty applications, up from 10.9 per cent in 2009 but still a small share of total inventorship. Although 36.2 per cent of published PCT applications included at least one-woman inventor, almost 96 per cent featured at least one man. Among top 20 origins of published PCT applications, China, Spain and Türkiye had the largest proportion of women inventors in 2023 (one-fifth). Whereas India, Germany and Japan only had around one in 10 inventors named in published PCT applications were women.  

These figures are more than a statistical gap; they represent structural exclusion from the formal systems that define innovation itself. When patenting becomes the dominant measure of creativity, the innovations that occur in community spaces, informal economies or female-dominated sectors like care and education simply vanish from the data. The GII, by rewarding patent-heavy outputs, reinforces a hierarchy that equates innovation with industrial and technological invention, while sidelining social and process-based forms of creativity that are central to many women’s contributions.  

WIPO’s Development Studies analysis of 3.68 million PCT applications found women were only 13 per cent of inventors between 1999 and 2020, and projected parity in patenting would not be reached before 2061 at current rates. Those global figures mask regional patterns and sectoral clustering. Asia’s growth in female inventorship has been fast paced - an 808 percent increase between early and later decades. However, the gains of this phenomenon have been concentrated in economies and fields of technology. Women are more visible in biotechnology, food chemistry and pharmaceuticals, where they make up 30% of inventors. However, mechanical and electrical engineering that make up core fields of patent counts and high-tech exports, have less than 10% women as inventors. This is reflective of the key problem - the GII gives weight to those areas that are patent-heavy - these areas are also where women are most underrepresented. 

Southeast Asia’s Innovation Landscape

Southeast Asia’s recent trajectory on the GII is undeniably positive. Singapore sits near the global frontier; Vietnam and Malaysia have advanced steadily; Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines have registered incremental gains. At the same time, gaps persist across political representation, senior leadership, and STEM/ICT occupations, as captured by regional gender-equality assessments. The paradox is straightforward: countries can climb innovation rankings while stagnating on gender equality because the GII’s reward structure does not determine whether the innovation it captures is inclusive.

If we look at regional trends we notice - Thailand and Vietnam have relatively high female participation in the labour force, but research leadership and tech entrepreneurship are still masculine fields. Women dominate parts of Indonesia's informal commerce and micro-enterprise; they innovate under constraints, but their efforts do not emerge in innovation data. In the Philippines, firm digital inclusion indicators co-exist with persistent disparities in STEM jobs and ICT leadership. The net impact is paper progress paired with ground-level exclusion. Lacking gender-aware diagnostics, policymakers may mistake aggregate movement in rankings with truly broad-based innovation.

Southeast Asia’s innovation systems are expanding, but gender gaps remain pronounced. The Global Gender Gap Report 2025 places the region’s overall parity at 69.4 per cent, with economic participation at 71.6 per cent but political empowerment languishing at 15.3 per cent. Women dominate sectors such as healthcare (58.5 per cent) and education (52.9 per cent), yet only 29.5 per cent of tertiary-educated senior managers are women. These patterns matter because the GII’s indicators reward activities tied to large firms, patenting and exportable technologies, arenas where women’s presence is limited.   

What this means in practice is that the GII may overstate national innovation performance while understating gendered barriers within it. A country could rise in GII rankings even as its innovation ecosystem remains structurally exclusionary. The APEC report Women and Patents: Towards Gender Parity in APEC documents how these structural gaps translate into invisibility. Between 1995 and 2015 only 29 per cent of PCT filings worldwide listed at least one-woman inventor, and just 5 per cent were exclusively female-invented. In Asia women account for 17.4 per cent of PCT inventors; Latin America fares better at 19.2 per cent. APEC argues that patent-centric measurement therefore understates women’s contributions and risks rewarding systems that were not designed with gender equity in mind.

Structural Barriers in IP, Tech and Higher Education

The gender gap runs through both intellectual property systems and the technology sector. In 2023, women made up only 17.7% of inventors worldwide. Different studies suggest that, at the current rate, gender parity in patenting could still be decades away — roughly 2058 according to APEC (2023), 2061 in WIPO’s global analysis (2023), and as late as 2077 in Rouse’s study (2025). In the Asia-Pacific only 28 per cent of patent practitioners are women, a constraint on both access to advice and on enforcement priorities.  

In technology, the picture is similar. A BCG/IMDA study across six Southeast Asian economies reports women make up only 34-40 per cent of the tech workforce and just 8 per cent of technical leadership roles; fewer than 30 per cent of technical job applicants are women and nearly half of female tech graduates do not pursue technical careers. These pipeline effects mean that by the time governments and indices measure startups, patents or high-tech exports, the pool of women who might contribute to those measures has already been narrowed. 

Universities offer a partial correction. Evidence shows women account for about 26 per cent of university-based inventors in some contexts, higher than their share in corporate R&D, and targeted mentoring, patent literacy and visibility of female role models increase participation in patenting. This points to where change is possible: institutional culture, access to networks, and reform in IP training have measurable impacts on gender inclusion. For Southeast Asia, where public universities often act as national R&D anchors, this is a vital entry point for reform. 

What a gender-informed GII would look like

Fixing the bias requires three changes. First, gender-disaggregated data must become standard across patent and innovation statistics. Without it, we keep ranking countries on measures that omit half the story. Second, the GII should broaden its scope to recognise social, public-interest and informal innovation, domains where women are often active, but which current indicators miss. Third, measurement must be paired with policy: mentorship, finance for commercialisation, and university-led patent training have documented effects in improving women’s inventive participation.   

Finally, we must recognise that new technologies can reproduce old biases. The UNDP warns that AI systems mirror societal inequalities and that the AI workforce itself is maleskewed, reducing chances that bias will be caught or corrected. The same care should apply to composite indices. If we keep feeding biased inputs into our benchmarking tools, we should not be surprised when outputs reproduce inequality. 

The GII matters because it shapes policy and prestige. As things stand, it tells a partial story: one of patent counts and high-tech outputs, true, but not one that reflects the full creative economy of the Global South. To measure innovation fairly, the index must show who is inventing, in what fields, and under what conditions. That requires gendered data, wider definitions of innovation and policies that help women convert ideas into protected, commercialised work. Only then will global rankings align better with the reality of inclusive innovation in Southeast Asia. 

Why is Innovation not Neutral

The GII is based on a tacit premise that innovation is an across-the-board good, made visible in artefacts like patents and products. However, innovation is socially situated and gendered. What problems are prioritised, which techniques are funded, and what results are valorised all depend on institutional histories and power relationships. 

By designing safety features in automobiles along masculine bodies, or by ignoring women's time pressures and risk exposure in digital finance instruments, technologies replicate discrimination. Increasing women's involvement in STEM and ICT is not only a matter of fairness but also one of epistemological breadth. 

Diverse teams create more questions, recast problem statements, and expand sets of solutions—from FemTech and safety engineering to caregiving innovation and community resilience. Growth is dependent on high-technology R&D, but frugal and local solutions are also critical to the social resilience underpinning Global South development. Women are crucial to enhance cognitive diversity and introduce multiple perspectives. Creative abilities are lost when women and other peripheral communities are excluded from what defines the very essence of innovation.

Conclusion

The GII has achieved placing innovation at the heart of development strategy, and it has offered a shared language for debate by policymakers. But quantified in terms of its present metric, innovation in Southeast Asia can seem more complete and more inclusive than it is. 

The index fails to satisfactorily witness women's contributions, undercounts informal and socially embedded innovation, and hides the arrangements that decide who reaps value. If inclusive growth in the Global South, the solution is straightforward: measure what matters. That is, creating gender-aware, locally based indicators and connecting them with institutional change that redistributes opportunity and reward. Only in this way will the index capture the entire range of inventive labour both formal and informal—that maintains Southeast Asian societies and drives their futures.