Liaison statement
LS on Use of Inclusive Language in 3GPP specifications

1. Overall Description:
3GPP TSG SA# 90-e has agreed to use more inclusive and neutral language in the
3GPP specifications and have updated the 3GPP specification drafting rules
accordingly. Please see attached, the approved Change Request (CR) in SP-201142
for more details. 3GPP plans to replace the occurrences of non-inclusive
terminology (i.e. Master, Slave, Whitelist, Blacklist) from all Rel-17 3GPP
Technical Specifications and 3GPP Technical Reports. Initial set of updated
specification will be approved at the March 2021 TSGs meetings.

2. Actions:
To:     IEEE SA, IETF, GSMA, ETSI, OMA, ISO, OneM2M, ITU-T, TIA, ATIS, SAE,
5GAA, IEC ACTION: 3GPP kindly requests to take the above information into
account. To:     IEEE 802.1, IEEE 1588 ACTION: 3GPP kindly request to take the
above information into account. In some 3GPP specifications (e.g. TS 23.501),
references are made to IEEE specifications (e.g. IEEE 802.1AS) that use
non-inclusive terminology. 3GPP would like to understand whether IEEE 802.1 and
IEEE 1588 also plans to undertake a similar effort and if so, suggest the
alternate terms to be used. In the absence of any such activity in IEEE, 3GPP
would follow their drafting rules and update 3GPP specification accordingly
which may result in terminology mismatch.

3. Date of Next TSG SA Meetings:
TSG-SA#91-e             March 18 -  29, 2021            electronic meeting
TSG-SA#92-e             June 15 - 21, 2021                      electronic
meeting