The term 'chairman' is long past its sell-by date, says Andy Gregg.

I seem to have caused a bit of a stir at the NCVO Trustees Conference a few weeks ago.

The conference was addressed by Helena Morrissey, from the 30 Percent Club - the initiative that aims to get more women onto corporate boards. Now, while there was not much evidence of it at the Trustees Conference itself, the voluntary and community sector (or at least parts of it) is a long way ahead of most of the private sector in terms of diversity. Indeed it might be useful if some of us could address private sector leaders about how to improve their record on this vital issue.

There was therefore a certain irony at the being lectured en masse in this way about diversity, especially as the only diversity that was mentioned was gender diversity – nothing about race, disability, LGBT or any of the other “protected characteristics” included in the Equalities Act. Morrissey set out how difficult it is to get women into top positions and made some suggestions from the private sector as to how this might be done (though “please no quotas!”). All the while she was constantly referring to the top person in these organisations as the "chairman".

I believe that if you insist on a gender-biased term for the most important person in the organisation you are likely to end up with a gender-biased outcome in terms of their recruitment, as surely as night follows day. In the question period I stood up and said that I thought using the term 'chairman' was part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Whilse Helena Morrissey’s response was both dignified and positive:  “Good point, I’ll drop the chairman bit from today”, some  in the audience seemed to be appalled. One woman angrily turned to me and in a cut-glass accent said that she “liked being called the chairman”.  I almost replied with “I bet you do!” but thought better of it. Later in the tea room someone came up to me and roared: “I am not a chair”. This was extraordinary – I don’t expect surrealist philosophy worthy of the great Rene Magritte at an NCVO conference!

I am afraid my internal voice said to me: “That’s right, a chair doesn’t begin to adequately describe this person – sofa would be better, or even a full three-piece suite.”

Indeed, since we are discussing the problem some people have with being described as inanimate objects, why is it that High Court judges seem to be fine with the collective noun “the Bench”?

Polite connectedness

Seriously though, words matter.  Language matters. Just as most of us would never think of using a term like “coloured” or “cripple” to describe a person, so we also need to be wary of the ways in which our language can contain more subtle presuppositions about race, gender and disability. Language does not just denote facts but it also carries important connotations and we need to try to avoid negative or out-of-date ways of describing people if we are to move towards a more equal and tolerant world. This is not a matter of “political correctness” but rather, as I prefer to call it, “polite connectedness”. 

We should be trying to describe people (both individuals and in groups) in ways that they are comfortable with and that do not carry implicit connotations about power and prejudice. One woman respondent on the civilsociety.co.uk comments page said she “would still prefer to be addressed as chairman – it is the office not the person”. For me, chairing is not about the “office”, it is about an activity which can be done well or badly. If I chair a meeting well it has nothing to do with me having the office of “chairman”. Rather it is about how well I listen, how well I lead the meeting through the agenda, ensuring that everyone has a chance to express their views and that these are then clearly recorded etc.

I do agree that the term “chairperson” is cumbersome and I don’t use it myself. When I introduce myself I say that I chair the board of X organisation and sometimes that I am their “chair”. In other words I use the term where I can as a verb (to describe a set of activities) rather than as a noun (to denote an “office”). For me the term “chairman” is both insulting and discriminatory while using the gender-neutral “chair” is both legitimate and helpful.  Over more than 30 years I and many colleagues have struggled both to get equalities taken seriously and for the language that we use to reflect this. It is a worrying measure of how as a society we are moving backwards on equalities that the use of gender-biased language is not taken seriously.