Annemarie Quill: Chairman old-fashioned word

SEEING RED: Gail McIntosh was incensed when the man leading the joint councils' shared services company signed off his "chairman's report" with the title "chairman".

As I get older, I find I am getting kissed a lot more.

Several times a day is not unusual nowadays. And not just by one person ... it seems I am loved by many. Sometimes I kiss them back. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I know them. Sometimes they are strangers. Mostly it is just a quick peck. But some include several kisses one after another. Hugs too.

When it comes to kissing back, I am selective, reserving it for friends or good contacts. Although some I admit I have never met. Women kiss me too. And I kiss them back. Most of the kisses are from women. Now when I think of it, all of them are.

An email or text signed off with an "x" now seems the norm not just between friends, but in business communications. Maybe it is the work world I live in of magazines, but if I send an email without an "x" at the end it just seems a little bare, if not rude.

It took me a while to get used to it. Freelancing for an Australian publication I was exchanging emails with one of the "It Girls" of the Sydney scene, Roxy Jacenko. Her first email ever to me had three "xxx". I replied with four. She answered with five. This could be a long night.

Now I am so used to signing my texts to friends and magazine contacts with a kiss, that recently, writing a text to one of my (male) bosses telling him something mundane, I inadvertently signed it with an "X". Oops. I sent a follow up text: "Sorry about that - I didn't mean to kiss you".

Yet such informality of our electronic business communications has not filtered through to face-to-face ones. Or at least not in Tauranga. And certainly not in our local councils.

Mayor Stuart Crosby has put forth a vision for Tauranga to put a heart in the city. I agree it is a great vision.

It is a shame that Tauranga City Council has so much potential to be part of the beating heart of our city but it is so strangled by old-fashioned grey bureaucracy that any heart it might have is seriously in need of a defibrillator.

Take the debate in the council this week over the use of the word chairman. We reported this week that Tauranga councillor Gail McIntosh was incensed when the man leading the joint councils' shared services company signed off his "chairman's report" with the title "chairman".

She said the title "chairman" had no place in the 21st century. "These days have gone."

She told the Bay of Plenty Times afterwards that the term "chairman" alienated women and said those men belonged in that position. "Well I'm sorry, you don't."

I have to say I agree with Gail on both counts ... men don't own that position and the gender delineation between men and women in positions of leadership is so old fashioned it would be laughable if it didn't symbolise the severity of sexism still present.

It is a worry that local government is so set in the dark ages. Mayor Crosby can shrug it off that people don't care. But I am shocked that Bay of Plenty Regional Council chairperson Doug Leeder defends chairman as "inherited" and that "he would not be losing any sleep over a term that went back to the days when most people that chaired meetings were men". "We need to move on," he says.

We do Doug. From you. And that Bay of Plenty Regional council committee chairperson Paula Thompson says she would not "die in the ditch" over it. With that attitude she is already dead in the ditch.

Language is important. Language creates cultures. It influences. It embeds attitudes.

The way we refer to people reflects the way we view and respect them.

Okay, so the title chair is a little strange, reducing the head of an organisation to a piece of furniture. Madam Chair even worse - like furniture in a posh brothel.

But seriously what is wrong with a gender-neutral term such as chairperson?

I am glad Bill Holland is proud to be a man. I am proud to be a girl. I prefer to be a girl than a woman. But if females are proud of being women that is fine with me. Because in our non-work lives we can call ourselves what we like.

But when it comes to titles or positions of leadership there should be no separate professional titles for men and women.

The commercial world has long accepted this. Most businesses use the term chairperson. There is no separate term for male and female directors, accountants, managers, auditors, lawyers, judges, coroners, or real estate agents.

There are exceptions in the commercial world, but these are for jobs that you guys are welcome to keep: taxman, conman, binman, repo-man, bogeyman, madman.

In the US this year, Janet Yellen, the first woman to head the Federal Reserve Board, the top job in the US banking system, said she wanted to be referred to as "chair".

As more women move into positions of board leadership this rightly reflects that leadership positions are for either gender.

New Zealand has woefully too few females in executive board positions. There is much that needs to be done to change that ... and much of that involves complex challenges such as balancing childcare with leadership roles. But some things to encourage more women into leadership are very simple. Like using the right terminology, which is non alienating to women.

Chairman, with its implicit assumptions of male power, and chairwoman, which sounds too much like charwoman (English house cleaner), have no place in today's language.

It is not petty or politically correct to demand equality in language. Equality in language leads to equality in life. Words send a message. Here's mine:

"Dear Tauranga City and Regional Councils, it is now the 21st century, please come and join us. xoxo Mwah."