A COUNCIL has been told to purge its constitution of terms that refer to gender.

Denbighshire County Council is undergoing an annual review of the rules that run the authority and one councillor wants it to get rid terms referring to the male gender like he or his.

Llandrillo/Cynwyd county councillor, Mabon ap Gwynfor, spoke to members of the corporate governance scrutiny committee today and highlighted one particular passage that he felt needed changing.

The passage referred to the mover of a motion being allowed to “exercise his right of reply”.

Cllr ap Gwynfor said: “I think this needs tidying up. There are some gender specific references in it which need to be corrected.

“A person’s gender has no bearing on their ability to carry out the duties of being a councillor or any role within the council.

“This is just an anomaly.”

The council’s chief legal officer, Gary Williams, agreed that some work needed to be done on the issue.

“I think that is a fair point you make. This is a model that has been given to us. “Maybe we should just go through the constitution and make sure those references are corrected,” he said.

Any move to remove references to gender has been hailed by campaigners.

Natasha Davies, policy and research lead at Chwarae Teg, a charity that supports women in the world of work, said: “While a relatively simple change, moving to gender neutral language can help challenge the assumption that it’s the ‘norm’ for men to hold these kinds of positions. This is particularly important in relation to positions of power or senior roles, where women are already under-represented.

“Increasingly, people are preferring to use more gender neutral terms throughout society to better reflect the diversity of our communities and workforces. Diversity is improving, albeit slowly, and adapting the language we use to suit that can only be a positive thing.”