ABSTRACT. Innovation, as well as scientific research, is not a gender-neutral activity. There are few research results available concerning women's and men's contribution to the process of innovation at the national, regional and enterprise levels. Examining the current situation in this area of research, is the first and necessary step towards better understanding of women's and men's potential in the process of innovation. It is also a chance to point out a new source of synergies taking place in this process. The main objective of this article is to present the results of research addressing gender approach to the process of innovation. The first part of the article presents newly created integrated genome, dedicated to conduct the multidimensional research on women and men participation in the process of innovation, examining their traits, attitudes, behaviours and competencies. This design allows us to grasp the commonalities and differences between women and men roles in the process of innovation. The second part of article presents results of the pilot survey. Respondents of this survey were research personnel from Polish innovative enterprises. There are certain differences and similarities in what women and men perceive as important in the process of innovation. Skilful use of these attitudes in mixed research teams may become a new source of progress in the process of innovation.

ABSTRACT. The growing importance of gender studies in many disciplines is recently presented in the literature. However, there is no research on gender as the extraordinary source of innovation development. Specifically, patent activity is among the important elements determining the involvement of men and women in the innovation process. The article presents the results of studies focused on the patent inventors' role, both women and men, in development activities of entities belonging to the business enterprise sector. The research objectives were: 1) to capture the statistical picture of inventive activity taking gender into account, and 2) to identify the directions and dynamics of change with regard to the proportion of inventors in the EU member states. The main results shows the increasing role of women rather than man as the inventors of patents in the business enterprise sector of the leading EU countries in a long term.

This paper deals with the attempt to search for the sources of creativity in the broad

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Unpaid labour, including care labour is mostly performed by women. Economic theories explain differences in allocation of time between women and men in various ways – neoclassical theories point to the rational choice associated with the varying efficiency of women and men both in the labour market and in the household, while heterodox theories point to the influence of norms, social values and traditions, according to which the man is the breadwinner and the woman the caregiver. Unpaid labour is often called home duties or responsibilities, and even though it is very difficult, tiring and demanding, it is not valued and respected. The main objective of this paper is to present the importance of unpaid care work in the economy and propose the reconsideration of economic policies.