Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Tokenism

In a workplace context, tokenism refers specifically to a proportional imbalance of workers where less than 15 percent represent a socially designated group (out-group) distinguished from the dominant group (in-group). Most commonly in American culture, this in-group is white men. Women were the focus of the original and many subsequent tokenism studies. This literature does not include the use of the term token in the hiring context, wherein token denotes an affirmative action hire. The following overview reviews the history of tokenism theory and research and then explores its integration into other strands of research focused on gender, workplace diversity, organizational context, and changing the status quo. The theme that runs through this overview is that tokenism is one piece of defining an organization's context, with consequences for workers operating within that context.

Tokenism Theory and Research: A History

The concept of tokenism in the workplace was introduced in 1977 with Rosabeth Moss Kanter's chapter on “Numbers: Minorities and Majorities” in her seminal book Men and Women of the Corporation and in her paper that same year in the American Journal of Sociology on “Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women.” Drawing on detailed observations of a Fortune 500 company, Kanter described, in her words, not a pyramid but rather an Eiffel Tower of shrinking representation of women as an observer looked farther up the organizational hierarchy. Although her case study insightfully explored the opportunity structure and power dynamics of this corporation, her work with 20 saleswomen in a 300-person sales force focused on their small proportional representation, which, she concluded, caused these women (1) to stand out and thus experience performance pressures, (2) to feel different from their male colleagues and thus be isolated from informal and social networks (social isolation and boundary heightening), and (3) to be expected to fulfill women-stereotypic roles (role encapsulation). Arguing that these outcomes were the result of skewed proportions, Kanter took a largely gender-neutral approach by suggesting that by balancing proportions, these outcomes would evaporate.

Scholarly interest in tokenism in sociology was meteoric; by 1983, tokenism was an official abstracting term in sociology journals. Across the 1980s, the tokenism outcomes Kanter identified were confirmed with military cadets, corrections officers in male prisons, policewomen, rapid transit operators, auto workers, steel workers, coal miners, concession stand workers, managers, physicians, law and engineering students, lawyers, and academics. In contrast, a growing body of research with proportionally underrepresented men in female-dominated work (such as nursing, noncollege teaching, social work, clerical jobs, and child care) failed to document these outcomes and instead found some advantages (“a glass escalator”) to being a token. For example, Janice Yoder and Laura Sinnett randomly assigned beginning seasonal concession workers and found that a token woman experienced tokenism consequences, women at a gender-balanced site did not, and token men at a women-dominated site benefited with year-end promotions. Seemingly, more than numbers are at work, raising questions about tokenism processes in specific out-groups (women and racial/ethnic minorities).

More than Numbers: Gender

Research has since focused in two areas: stereotyping and status. Much gender-stereotyping research has been developed in social psychology, including stereotype threat as proposed by Claude Steele. “Stereotype threat” refers to the activation of stereotypes for groups with which people identify, often outside their awareness. Even subtle contexts can activate stereotype threat, such as the gender composition of a group. For example, Denise Sekaquaptewa and Mischa Thompson gave white women and men a math test, varying the gender composition of the four groups in which they individually completed the test (as a solo woman or man or in a same-gender group) as well as the description of the test (either as a stereotype-threatening traditional math test or a nonthreatening test impervious to gender differences). Men's average scores were unaffected across groups; however, for women, either being solo or in the threat condition yielded lower overall math scores compared to the same-sex, no-threat control. Women's scores sank further when they were both solo and threatened. In sum, tokenism's performance pressures are supported in a context that is specifically gendered.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution