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Summary
This report critiques the limitations of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes, emphasising that while they offer partial relief, they often fall into tokenism, a superficial inclusion of women that masks, rather than dismantles, systemic oppression.
“While diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes are great, they offer partial solutions to systemic oppression, they are half-baked reliefs, they are not end points. Hence, effort should go further than quota systems and seek to dismantle institutionalised and systemic barriers that create breeding grounds for systemic oppression.”
TOKENISM refers to the superficial attempt to include a marginalised or oppressed group to avoid criticism or put on an appearance of progress. The term was coined by the US sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter in the late 1970s to describe a situation where marginalised people take up token functions within a social group.
Tokenism could be unintentional; other times, it could just be used as a tool to shut down activists or protesters by throwing bread crumbs their way, without actually remedying the problem.
TOKENISM is bad because:
✖️ Recognition of problem with minimal effort at redressing it: Tokenism recognises the existing structure of marginalisation; however, instead of addressing it from the root cause, it opts for window dressing to create an appearance of acceptance and progress.
✖️ Reinforcement of power structures: Instead of emancipating a whole class of people, bread crumbs are thrown at a few to give an appearance of equality.
However, these few people from the marginalised class who get to sit at the table do not have much power to effect actual change (as evident in the picture above). Their vote can easily be crowded out because they are the minority.
For instance, the then-President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ), introduced the 35% women’s inclusion in ministerial appointments. Now, suppose an anti-women policy is being proposed. In that case, even if all these women band together and vote against it, they are still in the minority and not capable of effecting any meaningful change that would positively uplift their class.
A recent example is Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan (Nigeria), whose suspension was approved by the Senate because she petitioned against the sitting Senate President for sexual harassment. Even if all the female senators in Nigeria were to vote against it, they would not form a simple majority. So while their physical presence gives an air of inclusiveness, their presence is, in reality, ornamental because they lack the numerical or political strength to throw weight and back up their position. They merely exist to make the oppressor class look good and the oppressed class look represented, instead of actually dealing with a pre-existing problem.
✖️ Dehumanisation and stress: Oftentimes, Black women and other marginalised groups who have been tokenised report feeling stressed. They are often saddled with the added and enormous responsibility of ‘representing their people,’ and they are often not given the leverage to make mistakes like others. The mistake of one reflects poorly on the entire class, which is often used as a system justification for oppression. Now, the ruling class can point to their mistake and say, “See, this is the reason why we do not want women here.”
An example was when Alison Diezani, a Nigerian minister, embezzled public funds, and it was used as a justification for excluding women in politics.
People said, “See, this is why we cannot have women because women in power do worse than men.” Meanwhile, President Sani Abacha keeps sending money to Nigerians from the grave more than 2 decades after his death, because his loots keep being discovered and no one knows the extent of his loot. This has never been used as proof that men in authority abuse power.
A man makes mistakes for himself, and a woman makes mistakes for her whole gender. A man’s mistake is a personal behavioural flaw, while a woman’s mistake is a collective feminine flaw.
✖️ TOKENISM gives an appearance of progress: Instead of making real progress, TOKENISM gives an appearance of it.
Despite their noticeable feats at bridging pre-existing racial or gender divides, DEIs, quota systems, and other inclusivity programs easily fall into tokenism because, for the time being, quota systems exist to lessen the harshness created by oppressive systems, instead of overhauling systems that create breeding grounds for oppression.
✖️ Tokenism ironically reinforces oppression: When President Jonathan introduced the 35% women in ministerial appointment policy, what that invariably meant is that 65% of the seats were reserved for men!
Do you see how that works?
By ‘reserving’ only 35% of the seats for women, he inadvertently reserved 65% for men. Of course, that would be called progress, considering that women previously occupied a little more than 10% of the seats. While progress is being made, we are merely slugging our way to equality instead of disrupting inequitable systems.
✖️ Tokenism creates a faux sense of privilege: Regarding the 35% women inclusion, many argue that the focus should be on competence and merit, not inclusion. This is often because they erroneously believe that DEIs and quota systems ‘unmeritoriously’ favour the oppressed class and overlook merit. They do so without a reason because the reason the ruling class are often over-represented in positions of power is not because they merit it more, but because the marginalised class are ‘unceremoniously’ sidelined.
For instance, ‘Women are the Gender-Disaggregated Data Analysis of the Nigerian Lending Market’ reports that 98% of Nigerian women are left out by credit facilities.
Women are less likely to attract investments, seed funding, and credit facilities than men. In fact, women increase their chances of attracting investors by adding a man’s name to the team. So when a women-focused group, in a bid to bridge this very obvious inequality, say “80% of our funds go to women entrepreneurs,” the men, in an ironic way, would feel “marginalised.” They would say, “Why not pay attention to merit instead of gender?”
But they soon forgot that gender-based consideration is, in fact, the very reason why they are at the top of the food chain. It was never about merit in the first place. Their overrepresentation is directly tied to women’s deprivation, not merit.
This is often the case because banks and investors will not outrightly say, “We will give men primary consideration. ” However, in practice, they do. But when women-led organisations seek to remedy this problem, they clearly say, “We will give women primary consideration.” Hence, it becomes easy to accuse them of discriminating against men when their intention is to include women and bridge a discrimination gap.
According to them, merit has flown out of the window in favour of inclusion. When inequality favours men, it is merit and competence; when an attempt is made to rectify pre-existing inequalities, it is seen as excluding men.
“The moment the ruling class are not made the focal point, they begin to scream reverse sexism or reverse oppression. So this ends up putting the oppressed class in a more challenging situation.”
This is why the quota system is a good starting point, but should not be the end point. The end point should be dismantling systems breeds as opposed to plastering quotas over our failings.
How to Tackle Tokenisation
✅ Grassroot solutions: Solutions should be focused on addressing a problem from the grassroots rather than pruning the branches. For instance, instead of saying, “we give female applicants first consideration,” and merely stopping at that, focus should be given to addressing the issue holding women back, like unpaid labour, the presumption that men are more competent, workplace harassment, etc. If the obstacles are removed, there would be no need for the DEI programmes.
✅ More holistic approach: While DEI programmes are great, they offer partial solutions to systemic oppression, they are half-baked reliefs, they are not end points. Hence, effort should go further than quota systems and seek to dismantle institutionalised and systemic barriers that create breeding grounds for systemic oppression”
✅ Listen to the oppressed: No one knows where the shoe pinches better than the wearer. A solution that is NOT curated from the eyes or viewpoint of the marginalised class is, at its very best, laughable. Solutions should first take cognisance of the viewpoint of the oppressed class and listen to workable tips on how to remedy it.
✅ Actively work to dismantle systems of oppression: Voting for Obama is not a compensation for other forms of racism. Employing 10 more women is not a compensation for other forms of sexism women face, even in the same workplace.
It is great that you consider women, but are those female employees suffering other forms of sexism, like gender pay gap, promotion gap, presumption of incompetence because of gender, workplace harassment?
It is not enough to include the marginalised, steps must be taken to address other forms of inequalities they would face. The work does not stop at merely including a few. The upliftment of a few does not compensate for the marginalisation of the majority. If one woman is in chains, for her sake, feminism should remain.
Instead of giving oppressed people tools to navigate their oppression a little more favourably, reckoning should be had to remove those walls and obstacles that constitute oppression for them.
Editor’s note: This story was written by Dogo Joy Njeb and was first published on SheResonance
