Quiz: Chairman or chairwoman?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 11/7/2006 10:19 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>The OED entry does say of "chairwoman" that it was "Hardly a
>recognized name until 19th c."  I suspect it wasn't invented due to
>17th century feminist agitation,

Probably not, but a question perhaps worth a PhD thesis? :-)

>but because "chairman" was taken to
>apply to men and thus to be not so much sexist as referentially
>inappropriate for those (unusual) occasions in which the individual
>in question was a woman.  (If a "chairman" is transparently a man who
>chairs a meeting/committee, it simply doesn't apply to a woman doing
>so.)  Note for example this 19th c. cite, indicating the tension
>between established lexical usage and referential accuracy:
>
>1869 Pall Mall G. 9 Sept. 8 The Duchess rose and said..then I think
>the arduous duties of chairman--or shall I say chairwoman?--will
>cease.

Although the 1699 and 1734 quotations are not so confused.  Viz. the
1734 Fielding Univ. Gallant 11, She sits..chairwoman of a committee
of fools, to criticize on fashions.  (Although perhaps Fielding's
context of fashion already implied a women's committee.)

>I doubt that the (mostly nonce) occurrences of "chairwoman" during
>the early centuries led to the gender-specificity of "chairman",
>which presumably was essentially as gender-specific as "man".
>
>Interesting that "chair" in the relevant sense, often dismissed as an
>illogical neologism, has a respectable lineage of its own.

I too was astonished some years ago (before the CD-ROM and online
OEDs) to learn this.

Joel

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