IBA Annual Conference, Paris, Tuesday 31 October 2023

While the gender gap in data is not always life threatening, the design and use of artificial intelligence (AI) models in different industries can significantly disadvantage women’s lives. And while there is agreement that lots of good data can indeed help close gender gaps, there remain concerns that if the ‘right’ questions are not being asked in the data collection process (including data collected by women), gender gaps can actually widen when algorithms are misinformed. This not only has negative impacts on women, but also on business and economies.

In roundtable discussions, the 2023 IBA women litigators breakfast explored measures aimed at ensuring that: the use of AI systems does not lead to discrimination; how women litigators can be thought leaders in this field; and how legal tech can drive diversity, efficiency, and winning. The breakfast kicked off with an inspiring keynote address by Christiane Féral-Schuhl,[1] former President of the French National Bar Council (2018-2020) and former Chair of the Paris Bar (2012-2013).

Christiane Féral-Schuhl’s keynote address

‘In 2014, Amazon implemented an artificial intelligence-based computer program for recruiting its workforce. The program was tasked with examining candidates’ CVs to automate the recruitment process, and then assigned a score out of five based on profiles.

But the algorithm didn’t like women. In fact, the computer model used was based on CVs received over a ten-year period and showed a predominance of men. Consequently, according to the algorithm, for this position, male candidates were better and therefore rejected applications where there was a reference to women.

So, in the land of algorithms, where are the women?

As we all know, tomorrow’s world will be increasingly dominated by algorithms: they are more and more present in our daily lives, more and more intrusive, more and more inescapable.

Behind the lines of code, there are human beings. They are neither neutral nor objective. They reproduce, consciously or unconsciously, their own experiences.

And the algorithms draw on gigantic databases filled with ‘past’, stereotyped data, reflections of our history.

Framed by digital coaches and electronic diaries, ‘addicted’ to networks and multiservice apps, women lawyers are connected. They’re even hyper-connected 24 hours a day!

There’s another problem.

In a McKinsey study on Generative AI and the future of work in America,[2] it seems that 12 million additional professional transitions could be required by 2030. The report states that women are one-and-a-half times more likely than men to have to change jobs. And that’s because their jobs are less important and more time-consuming. Once again, women are negatively affected by the rise of artificial intelligence.

However, this digital world is strongly male dominated. In France, this would appear to be the only scientific discipline in which the number of women has fallen so sharply.

Just over 180 years ago, a woman – Ada Lovelace – was the first to design a program to be executed by an analytical machine, and while today, women account for 20 per cent of the workforce in the IT sector, only 12 per cent work in the digital sector.

What’s more, just seven per cent of teenage girls would spontaneously consider a career in the digital sector, compared to 29 per cent of boys.

In the final analysis, one might well ask whether there is any point in fighting for gender equality and against the propagation of stereotypes that are being built up in the digital world with the biases of the last century?

It’s not a school hypothesis! Remember. Laws passed by a near-unanimous majority of men did not resemble those now passed by assemblies made up of men and women.

So, we urgently need to demand responsible artificial intelligence.

Why not require a cross-section of men and women in the design of algorithms developed for public services?

At a time when algorithmic justice is on the rise, why not impose labelled, non-biased coding in calls for tender?

Coding equality is now a global issue.

With this in mind, in July 2019, the Conseil national des barreaux (the French National Bar Council), together with the representative bodies of the profession in the G7 states, alerted public authorities to the urgent need to ensure ‘better representation of women and minorities in science, technology and engineering, as the lack of diversity in the design, development and application of algorithms increases the risk of conveying existing prejudices’.

One thing is for certain. If women don’t want to find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide, they need to take this subject head on.

Conclusion

The question of gender equality is a long-term battle on all fronts.

It took me a long time to realise this. Yet you only have to look around you to see that certain totalitarian states do not hesitate to make women invisible: the Taliban regime bans women from accessing schools and universities and denies them the right to work; the Iranian regime intends to crush the protest movement of women who courageously demonstrate, risking their lives, by removing or burning their veils in public... Sadly, there is no shortage of examples.

These tragic events confirm Simone de Beauvoir’s warning: ‘Nothing is ever definitively acquired. All it takes is a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question. Throughout your lives, you must remain vigilant’.

Our profession must be mobilised and at the forefront.

The CNB, our institution representing lawyers in France, is acting with strength and determination.

The signing of the ‘Convention pour la communication sans stereotype de sexes’ set up by the High Council of Equality between men and women (HCEhf) in 2017, the ‘Pacte du Laboratoire de l'Égalité’ and the partnership with the Think-Tank ‘Agir pour l'égalité’ (Marie-Claire) are all testimony of its commitment.

The celebration of International Women’s Day (8 March) is also an opportunity to raise awareness and communicate on this theme.

On 4 October 2019, Law Day, the CNB, in partnership with the French Ministry of Education, met with young secondary school students in France and in French schools abroad, to discuss the theme of equality between girls and boys.

Likewise, the joint resolution passed on 11 July 2019 by the seven national organisations representing the legal profession in the G7 countries, which met for the first G7 Lawyers’ Summit. Together, they carried the voice of nearly two million lawyers to encourage the fight against inequality, and in particular inequality between women and men, in society and in the workplace, against conscious and unconscious bias, pay gaps, moral and sexual harassment.

I am convinced that it is thanks to all these daily individual and collective commitments, such as the Women Lawyers' Day organised on 12 January 2023 in Berne, under the aegis of the Swiss Federation of Lawyers chaired by Birgit Sambeth, that we will be able to restore a little more of this equality between women and men every day and fight against the violence suffered by women around the world.

But nothing will be achieved if we do not manage to make men understand that, behind this concept of equality, lies the future of our profession, its prosperity, its balance, its image in civil society. We must convince them that equality is an opportunity for all, men and women.

From now on, I dream of equality commissions chaired by men. It would be a fine symbol and an important step towards equality.’

Above: Session speakers