BizSugar.com › Success Stories › The Woman Inventor That Saved the Cotton Industry - Creative Innovation Group Creative Innovation Group

One reason only a fraction of patent holders are women is because women simply aren’t encouraged to invent. That wasn’t the case with Ruth Benerito, who was surrounded by encouragement in her formative years, which was spent in the grips of the Great Depression.

Her father was an engineer, who made sure his daughters had access to the same education that was available to boys, at a time when girls didn’t go on to college. Ruth started her college education at the age of 15 and earned a degree in chemistry and math, though chemistry suited her the most because she enjoyed solving practical problems. Her parents both encouraged her to compete in a man’s world, and then, STEM fields were even more of a man’s world than they are now.