Overview
Tokenism is the practice of including one or a few members of a minority in a group, without their having authority or power equal to that of the other group members. It functions to place a burden on an individual to represent all others like her. The suspicion of tokenism can undermine a woman in tech's authority or perceived right to hold her position.
In practice in geek communities this can take the form of inviting several men whose careers are well established to speak at a conference and, in order to appear gender-balanced, inviting one younger woman whose career is just beginning and who is deemed unlikely to assert herself, make demands, or complain. This type of power imbalance played out repeatedly contributes to community perceptions of tokenization.
Tokenization can also occur when one woman is asked to represent her gender in a field over and over. Rather than seeking out many qualified women, group or conference organizers tend to return to canonizing one or two women as the most famous or as especially expert.
Examples
Advice on combating tokenism
- When looking for women to present at Technical conferences, choose different ones, from a range of fields, to show a diversity of experience and opinion
- Invite a group of women to present together at a technical conference. Get their input early in the cycle in planning and in forming topics.
- Reach out individually to women too, but not only to women you personally know.
- Provide opportunities for people to connect with each other before a conference, so they can see that they're not the only woman there.
- When giving examples of women in a particular field, provide a list, not just the single easiest person you can think of
- Don't expect women in geek cultures to speak for all women: each woman is an individual, and will have her own story
- When creating fictional characters (for purposes ranging from writing a novel, to creating NPCs for a role-playing game, to inventing people for case studies in software manuals) don't just include a single female character, but show a range of them, with different interests and skills, preferably non-stereotypical; perhaps interacting with each other.
Further reading
- "Tokenism refers to a policy or practice of limited inclusion of members of a minority group, usually creating a false appearance of inclusive practices, intentional or not."