When local councillors started calling themselves "chair" rather than "chairman" everyone else was supposed to follow their example. A quarter of a century later very few have chosen to do so.

The expression "chair" was introduced in the late seventies. The word "chairman" was considered to be sexist because it was based upon the presumption that whoever was chairing a meeting was likely to be male. I think the first organisations to change were those which would now be described as loony left Councils but, throughout local government at least, the expression soon caught on generally. The proponents of the change usually said that their Council should "give a lead".

Indeed, some other organisations did follow that lead. In the NHS, for example, about half the people who are doing the chairing are called "chair''. The same applies to organisations like Business Link and TECs which exist in the nether world between the public and private sectors. But not one quoted public limited company has followed the example. From Sainsbury's to Stylo, from Pace to Peter Black, all have stuck to chairman. It is quite likely, in fact, that any change in their terminology would cause their shares to go down. They would appear to be saying "hey, look at us, we want to be more like local government". The City institutions who (often wrongly) equate public ownership with inefficiency would ball out as fast as they could.

Also, the debate about sex equality does seem to have moved on in the past 20 years. Most successful women are quite happy to accept that the word chairman is now a generic term which does not in any way denote the sex of the person in the job.

The distinction between "chair" and "chairman", however, does now perform one very useful task. It is a convenient shorthand to distinguish public sector from private sector organisations. This is not always the case, of course, because whether a voluntary organisation has a chair or a chairman depends upon its history and purpose - there is no set pattern.

But generally, if I hear someone addressed as "chair", I know taxpayers' money is being spent.

Which begs an interesting question. Most organisations, whatever they are, are now keen to present themselves as modern, entrepreneurial and unbureaucratic. Those are not adjectives which spring to mind for outfits that have "chairs''.

So will there be a swing back? I have not yet heard of a single organisations consciously deciding to drop the word "chair" but it could yet happen. For one thing, at least, I am most thankful. That dreadful alternative "chairperson" never developed any following at all and now seems to have disappeared.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.