Arbitration has a built-in obstacle to addressing gender imbalance

Gender balance marches on at a slow but not uniform pace in shipping, and one of the ranks with an especially long lag is dispute resolution.

Last week at its annual meetings in New York, the US Maritime Law Association (MLA), led by Holland & Knight lawyer Chris Nolan, turned its attention to promoting women in arbitration.

Today, just five of the 75 members of the New York-based Society of Maritime Arbitrators (SMA) are women, SMA president LeRoy Lambert told TradeWinds at the MLA sessions.