Tokenism Tokenism is an extremely common practice in the workplace environment of today; it can essentially be defined as the act of going out of one's way to include members of minority groups. According to Rosabeth Kanter's 1977 publication Men and Women of the Corporation, the inability to achieve equality within the workplace can be largely attributed to the placement of "token status" on certain groups of individuals. Oftentimes tokens possess marginal status as members who are allowed entrance but do not get to experience full participation due to their status as an "outsider" who may be fully qualified for the position but does not possess the necessary characteristics, i.e. sex or race, that are usually expected of persons in said position. The term token can also be used to describe people who are hired due to their difference from other members of the company or other employees: oftentimes this is done as an attempt to prove that the group does not discriminate against said group of people. This variety of tokenism is thought to have originated in the Southern United States, where schools and businesses would admit token African Americans in order to meet the desegregation orders of the federal government. In multiple instances, the number of tokens accepted into a group or company is less than the number of people from the token group who are qualified for acceptance. However, in some cases, tokens are people who do not possess the necessary qualifications to hold a position but are admitted because of their token status. An individual who possesses token status can have an affected career experience. Kanter hypothesizes that oftentimes, the token's experience is less related to whatever attribute makes them a token and more so influenced by the structural restraints that are intrinsic to the positions they fill. To elaborate, the positions held by tokens are generally lacking in power and the opportunity for advancement. Additionally, tokens operating within workplaces with skewed ratios that result in them being extremely outnumbered are "often treated as representations of their category, as symbols rather than individuals". Tokens are also extremely visible and subject to scrutiny due to their evident contrast from the majority. This can create large amounts of pressure to perform well; tokens will often either respond to this with overachievement or underachievement, both of which make further advancement difficult. More often than not, token status often leads to "demotivation, lower levels of performance, and diminished aspirations for the future". Many solutions to the problem of tokenism have been suggested; though a balanced work force will not eliminate all of the issues faced by tokens in the workplace, movement towards balance will help open the doors to some improvement. However, balancing the numbers and ratios is not necessarily the biggest issue at hand: a number of researchers suggest that power, privilege, and prestige are more important factors in the relationship between dominant and secondary groups in the workplace. Some believe that as the proportions of minority and majority workers balance out, tension within the workplace is actually more likely to increase rather than decrease. Though this may be true, the theory that increasing the proportions of the token groups would alleviate the issue should not be in any way discounted. This solution could possibly "reduce the isolation and effects of tokenism, improve token's position in the power structure of the department, and also increase their opportunities". Another solution could be to increase the number of tokens in managerial positions and to apply new policies of hiring and promotion; this affirmative action could work to give tokens the confidence they need to become full participants in the workplace rather than just representations of their category or token attribute.
The "double bind" for female workers People's career experiences are largely affected by how they are viewed by their coworkers, and the way employees' actions are perceived may vary based on gender due to the existence of a "double bind" for women. Social scientist Gregory Bateson described the general concept of a double bind as "a situation in which no matter what a person does, he 'can't win.'" If individuals are instructed or expected to act in contradictory ways, then they are caught in a double bind because no action they choose will be determined acceptable. Most men do not have difficulty reconciling their gender with expectations as an employee, for "definitions of ideal workers as those who are completely dedicated to their work, without career interruptions or outside responsibilities, privilege male workers." Additionally, being confident and assertive reflects positive traits for both men and leaders. Women, on the other hand, are compared to stereotypes about passive femininity that mean if they are assertive, they are viewed as acting in conflict with their internal nature and criticized. This represents a double bind because both perceptions paint women in a negative light. How women choose to react to this double bind situation will affect their experience in the workplace. For example, while women who act stereotypically masculine "might be viewed as competent because of their leadership style, they also receive more negative evaluations of their interpersonal skills than women who adopt a 'feminine' style" and "not being liked can […] negatively impact women's work relationships, access to social networks, day-to-day interactions and, ultimately, their advancement opportunities." Similarly, lab experiments and audit studies found that a "motherhood penalty" exists that can negatively affect wages and performance evaluations. Moreover, negative views of mothers working may be expanded to non-mothers and even those who are unmarried because "all women [may be viewed] as potential mothers." and in 1991, the first Fortune 1000 company offered domestic-partner health benefits to its employees. The rapid increase in queer workplace equality can be attributed to a number of factors, most notably isomorphism. Mimetic pressures, in which competing firms model the procedures of competitors, are especially visible in the adoption of domestic-partner benefits. For instance, after Wells Fargo and Bank of America adopted domestic-partner benefits in 1998, other banks, like Bankers Trust and Chase, soon followed voluntarily. Though much progress has been made in the area of same-sex benefits, LGBTQIA2S+ employees continue to face challenges in the workplace that their non-queer coworkers do not. According to a 2009 survey, 58 percent of LGBTQIA2S+ employees say coworkers make jokes or derogatory comments about LGBTQIA2S+ people "at least once in a while". But perhaps the single greatest contributor to the LGBTQIA2S+ experience in the workplace is the decision of employees to come out or remain closeted at work.
Brian McNaught, a lauded leader of gay sensitivity training, explained the pressures that surround a decision, noting that "gay people who have to worry about what will happen to them if they come out […] generally produce at a lower level than gay employees who don't" as it takes much energy to "put on a mask"; 54 percent of closeted employees report "lying about their personal lives in the past twelve months". and it is documented that being gay negatively impacts an employee's opportunity for promotion – 28 percent of gay employees remain closeted "because they feel it may be an obstacle to career advancement or development opportunities". In addition, transgender employees in particular also face other challenges. Though courts recently concluded that transgenderism is a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most notably in Smith v. City of Salem in 2004, courts still allow gender-specific dress and grooming codes, and are legally able to reject exemptions for transgender employees ; transgender employees thus often face the difficult choice of complying with the dress code or dressing in the gender they present and potentially losing their jobs. For queer employees, workplace inequality thus remains a fact of life.
Inequality in the financial field The glass ceiling The
Wall Street Journal came up with the term "the
glass ceiling" to describe the barriers that women face in efforts to get promoted to top-tier positions within their corporations. Despite their qualifications (women constitute 58% of all university graduates), women make up less than 8% of the top corporate-level positions. Multiple investment banks in particular try to hire women whenever possible (refer to tokenism section). Recruiters, however, still inherently use statistical generalization: the stereotypical woman is more likely to leave her position sooner than a man due to family-related reasons means that women inherently face greater challenges to promotion when the opportunity arise.
The corporate culture Financial rewards often play a huge role in people's decisions to enter and stay in corporate firms, but their experiences there often explain why they left. The "up-or-out" system prevalent in multiple consulting firms can help to explain the male-dominated hierarchy; women are often also excluded from the informal networks that men partake in outside of the office, activities that revolve around a "jock-talk" atmosphere In general, employees of professional firms tended toward homophily preferences, where they were drawn to coworkers similar to themselves. Thus, on Wall Street, just being a white, male junior colleague may to give you an advantage in promotional opportunities. At the same time, these practices also isolated those in the minority who felt a lack of support from their peers and superiors.
Access: barriers and advantages A preference for coworkers of similar features to oneself meant that managers often specifically selected individuals to share accounts and deals with; multiple times, this meant disadvantaging women and minorities for account allocations, performance evaluations and relative compensation. Connections made through informal networks often advantaged those individuals with better access to clients, accounts, and deals. Often, women are driven to switch fields within the business sector, for example from corporate finance to equity research, from heavily male-dominated to those that are more gender neutral. Such trade may result in substantial pay cuts, as the median earning in the new sector can be much lower than the median income in the old sector. Moreover, mentorship can play an important role in one's experiences at a workplace. Multiple firms have formal mentorship programs to guide promising new junior employees. In cases where the mentorship starts informally (the senior partner does so without company dictation to do so) some junior employees will inherently have the advantage over their peers. This can often end disastrously for workers who are outside of the informal networks that can start such ties. On Wall Street specifically, there were multiple male senior executives who were committed to encouraging success from women junior executives, with 65% of women who had mentors noting their mentors were male.
Inequality in STEM fields In 2019, women accounted for 27% of workers in
STEM-qualified fields, and earned almost 20% less than men in the same industries. The number of women in STEM changed minutely in 2021, as the percentage went up to 28%.
Communication In STEM industries, meetings and technical discussions are often knowledge and experience based. In these settings, people with more dominant – and often perceived to be "masculine" – personas tend to drive and overpower the conversation because they sound more knowledgeable on a certain topic. This way of communication, often correlated with self-promotion, can put men and people with more masculine personas at an advantage because "self-promotion is a stereotypically masculine communication style involving aggressive displays of confidence that assert one's own superiority". And even though "women's abilities to successfully self-promote are often inhibited by fear of backlash or social sanctions for counterstereotypical behavior", women in technology often feel the need to be more masculine to have their voice heard. Another way this manifests itself is in varying communication styles. A person with a "competitive communication style" may frequently interrupt others as a way of showing dominance. Studies have shown that interruptions are associated with masculinity as a meta-analysis of 43 studies found that men make more intrusive interruptions than women do.
Social factors Another factor that creates the difference in experience for men and
women in STEM fields is the social climate. The idea of the "old boy culture" is pertinent in male-dominated STEM fields where women find it difficult to fit in. Furthermore, female role models and mentors are rare for young women in these industries. Because mentors are important in aiding in career development as well as building self-esteem in the workplace, the lack of female mentors inhibits the growth and success of women in STEM workplaces. These social factors lead to an environment that may not be inclusive towards women because women feel like they need to be "one of the boys" in order to be included. Because of these social factors and the communication differences between men and women, the experience for women in STEM fields varies greatly from that of women in more gender-balanced or female-dominated industries. ==Work and family==