Why tokenism isn’t always a bad thing

Tokenistic gestures can sometimes appear lazy and inauthentic. However, there are instances where this method can make employees feel valued.

A research assistant at the University of South Australia, Dr Debbie Devis, joined The HR Leader to discuss how these gestures can be beneficial in promoting gender equity. Dr Devis also touched on an effective way for women to mitigate disadvantages in the workplace.

HR Leader: “Can tokenistic gestures be beneficial to gender equity?”

Dr Devis: “There are some things that you can do that actually feel a little bit tokenistic at first but do actually make an impact. To contextualise this, we ran a study where we collected people from around South Australia who worked in STEM, both men and women, and we asked them about their experiences in gender equity and some of the things that they found either caused barriers for women or helped overcome some of the barriers that women were facing.”

“One of the really strong things that women said was that workplaces that add tampons and pads into the bathroom made them, just such a small gesture, made them feel really welcome. Some people thought that was tokenistic, and other people thought that made them feel welcome in the workplace, knowing that they have a specifically different barrier than men might face in those situations.”

“The other thing that we found was that if anything we took away from COVID-19 was good, it was our ability to realise that workplace flexibility is massively helpful for specifically working mothers, and that’s a large part of the workforce. And flexibility not just benefited women; it benefited a lot of men, who, before the pandemic, were living with the burden of society saying men have to go out and work and provide for their family and you have to spend more time working than you do at home because that’s the woman’s job.”

Dr Devis continued: “Then they got all this time at home during COVID-19 with their kids and they realised, I love my family, I want to be with my family. And that flexibility allowed them to participate in more of their family dynamics and their family obligations. And they’re saying as well, no, we don’t want to go back.”

“Being able to do that also alleviates the disproportionate care burden on women and mothers as well, so it’s actually helping those women participate in the workplace more because their male partners are now able to help more at home.”

HR Leader: “For women who may feel disadvantaged at work, do you have any advice for them on how they can bring it up with their boss or some techniques they can utilise to mitigate this?”

Dr Devis: “One of the things that the women in our study were saying very commonly is that they felt invisible and they felt like their voices weren’t heard. They were actually standing up and trying to voice these barriers that they were facing, and they were falling on ears that just didn’t want to hear.”

“So in terms of techniques, I think that the really big one here is building that network, but specifically, people who are in different positions than you and who have more sway within your company need to be encouraged by you once you’ve established that relationship to sponsor you essentially through word of mouth.”

“So if you have a problem and your boss is not listening, if there’s somebody, who is adjacent to your boss, who has sway with your boss, who you know is a good advocate to you, talk to them and get advice from them because they may be able to have some really specific targeted advice there.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation with Debbie Devis on 30 May is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.