For decades, the world of international arbitration has criticized the absence of opportunities for women arbitrators at the highest levels of the arbitration practice. The standard explanation for this imbalance has focused on supposed bias, male domination, and “tradition,” which no doubt could well have been the root causes for the absence of women in the field of arbitration in ages past. However, I do not believe that this explanation suffices to explain the imbalance today. Rather, I submit that that the lesser role that women play in arbitration is a problem rooted in the costs of acquiring information about new and experimental arbitrators, a problem that has been common to arbitration. It is not really bias or male domination that has kept women and other new entrants diminished among the ranks of arbitrators, but the indisposition of arbitration users to “pay” the costs of gathering information about unknown arbitrators or to “risk” the appointment of new entrants in the absence of full information about them.

My central thesis is that a tectonic shift in this state of affairs is about to take place because of the brewing perfect storm of the “two TTs”: Transparency and Technology. Women, I believe, will be the principal beneficiaries of this change.

In short, the advance of technology and the pursuit of transparency in the world of arbitration are now dramatically (a) expanding the demand and supply of information about arbitrators and (b) lowering the costs of distributing that information among arbitration participants. Thus, the barriers that have kept women underrepresented are in the process of crumbling rapidly. This will improve the situation of women in arbitration most particularly.

This mutation will positively impact women in arbitration in three fundamental aspects:

1. it will reduce the financial costs of “becoming known,” as women will much more easily be able to raise their profile without, for example, paying the expensive costs and spending the time necessary to being physically present at the numerous conferences worldwide which are one of the principal mechanisms by which users interact with potential arbitrators, or being noted in some of the rankings that have become de rigueur in judging arbitrator quality.
2. It will allow women to showcase their output as arbitrators, academics, and case managers, making explicit the type of results, the nature of the disputes at issue, the amounts at issue, and often the clients involved; and
3. it will expand the available information about the work women do in arbitration, thus allowing users to rely on actual information.

As in all instances in which information becomes more accessible and cheaper, the beneficiaries are typically new entrants—women in this case.