The matter came before Cornwall Council’s constitution and governance committee at the request of Liberal Democrat councillor Ruth Gripper.
Unable to attend the meeting, a statement on her behalf was read out saying: “When I joined as a new member back in May, I remember at one of the induction training sessions various mentions being made to the ‘chairman’ of the committee or the ‘chairman’ of the council.
“I noticed it because what that said to me, quite clearly, is the council assumes that a committee chair is always a man. Happily that is not the case in practice, but I thought surely we could update our official language to reflect this?”
She added: “It might seem like a small thing but hopefully this also means it’s a small change to make. I don’t have particular views about how actual individual chairs should be addressed – that seems like something for them.
“For me, it’s about how the council refers to the role itself and what that says about expectations / assumptions about who will fit that role.”
Fellow Lib Dem Cllr Nicky Chopak replied that as a current chair of a committee she was “quite happy to be called a chair rather than a chairman or a chairperson”.
“We look at our language quite carefully at Cornwall Council. We’ve had conversations about ‘his’ and ‘her’ and issues around how we should be looking at men and women. I actually just think ‘chair’ fits every box.”
Reform UK councillor Kevin Towill added: “I’m not going to lose any sleep over this issue, but I do think ‘chair’ sounds much better than ‘chairperson’, which sounds a bit forced.”
Cllr Rob Parsonage, of the Cornish Independent Non-aligned Group, said: “I’d be happy with ‘chair’. It then falls to the individual – if it’s a lady, people can use ‘Madam Chairman’ or ‘Madam Chair’ if they wish.”
Cllr Dick Cole then called Independent councillor Mike Thomas to speak, who said: “Thank you very much, chair…man. I remember Cllr Mary May speaking on this and she was most insistent that she was referred to as ‘chairman’. She felt that she wanted that title and she was very positive about it.
“I personally have the view that it’s up to the person who happens to be chairing the meeting to make it quite clear how she or he wishes to be addressed and we should have that flexibility.”
Conservative councillor Jane Pascoe responded: “Having been a chairman of committees and a mayor, I think chairman should remain. The definition of chairman is the person presiding over a meeting.
“I’m always happy to be called chairman and I think it should remain the same. I think we’re getting into troubled waters here. We’ve got more important things to discuss.”
Fellow Tory Cllr Connor Donnithorne said he referred to his former ‘boss’, previous council leader Linda Taylor, as Madam Chairman. “I appreciate why it’s been brought for consideration, but of all of the things we have been debating today, I agree with Jane Pascoe, I don’t think necessarily it should be forced in terms of wording in the constitution.”
However, Green Party councillor Drew Creek believed a change was important: “I think we should move away from what is essentially a gender term and make it much more neutral and inclusive, and remove the masculine default of the word ‘chairman’. The etymology is clear and that’s not inclusive in this day and age. I would be much more comfortable with ‘chair’.
“I am very uncomfortable with the term ‘chairman’ because it is gendered language and it confers a superiority over a particular gender,” said felllow Green councillor Karen La Borde.
“We have a king and a queen, but if we have a queen we don’t have a king because he will supersede her status. This is actually what ‘chairman’ confers on us and I think it an outdated term now and it would be so easy to change it to ‘chair’.
Lib Dem councillor David Garrigan agreed. He said: “We need to put some context around this as our usage of it comes from the 1972 Local Government Act. The issue with that is that it was three years prior to the Sex Discrimination Act. I think the term should be consigned back to 1972 where it belongs.
“I think it’s clear that this term devalues women on a daily basis – I don’t want to be seen as mansplaining that. I think we should allow the women to talk about this, but it really does devalue people.”
Committee vice-chair(man) Cllr Jordan Rowse then brought up the elephant in the room – that the council can’t officially change its constitution when it comes to the use of ‘chairman’ as it’s a legal requirement.
He suggested that ‘chairman’ and ‘chair’ should be used interchangeably “because we have a statutory duty under the 1972 Local Government Act to refer to the chairman, so I don’t think – as out of date, regrettably, as that Act is – we can move away from that. It is not within our power to stop using the word ‘chairman’. It’s about facilitating ‘chair’ where we can.”
Reform councillor Jack Yelland said that as ‘chairman’ is a word that can’t be legislatively changed, it “feels pointless to have this discussion” and suggested it was down to the individual chair’s view on how they wanted to be addressed.
At the end of a debate which many observers didn’t expect to last quite as long as it did, Cllr La Borde said: “I thought you’d all pass it straight through just like that. I’m really surprised to hear so many of you in this room still considering that the use of the word ‘chairman’ is neutral. It is not.
“One of the things Cornwall Council should be doing is leading its community and, as we all know, female representation in politics is much lower than male representation. If we want to send the right message to females we have to remove gendered language.”
The committee unanimously agreed to a recommendation that where legislation refers to ‘chairman’, the council interprets this as ‘chair’ for the purposes of equality and diversity, except where the statutory term must be used for legal compliance.
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