Gender- and anti-American discrimination in alder-, select- and chair- (and the OED)

[Joel S. Berson]

Emily Norton, a female member of the Board of Aldermen in the city of 
Newton, Mass., has proposed changing the city's policy to allow its 
female members to officially have the title of "alderwoman."  [Boston 
Globe, Sept. 25, 2014.]

(All data below from the online OED.  For the OED, I suggest 
"selectwoman" should be added.)

In the case of chair-, an old and honourable solution is the 
genderless "chair" (1659).  "Chairperson" is a less old and less 
elegant solution (1971).

But "alder" and "select" don't work for the city and town governmental boards.

For anti-American discrimination:

chairwoman -- 1699
alderwoman -- 1557
selectwoman -- no

chairperson -- 1971
alderperson -- 1967
selectperson -- no

Googling:  I refuse to search for "alder" or "select" in the desired sense.

(1)  In 1868, a character in a play is introduced, by a male 
character, as "Miss Wolverine Griffin, Selectwoman of [spoiler 
follows] Newton, Mass."!  (I will inform Alderwoman Emily Norton.)

[The Spirit of Seventy-Six, or, the Coming Woman, a Prophetic Drama, 
by Ariana Wormeley Curtis, p. 26.]

I suppose "Wolverine" is appropriate for who I assume is an 
aggressively feminist American politician.

(2)  In the sense of a member of a "Board of ...", "selectperson" 
does not seem to exist; "selectpersons" not before 1999 (The New 
England Town Meeting: Democracy in Action, by Joseph Francis Zimmerman, p. 29).

Joel

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