TOKENISM: The Inequitable Side To DEIs and Inclusivity Programs.

"While DEI programs 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 creates breeding grounds for systemic oppression"

TOKENISM refers to the superficial attempt to include a marginalised or oppressed group in other to avoid criticism or put on an appearance of progression.

The term was coined by the US sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter in the late 1970s to describe a situation where marginalised people take up tokens 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 existing structure of marginalisation, however, instead of addressing it from the root cause, it opts for window dressing to put up 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 in other 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 lower to effect actual change (like evident in the picture above). Their vote can easily be crowded out because they are the minority.

For instance, When the Then President of Nigeria Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) introduced the 35% women inclusion in ministerial appointment. Now, if an anti-women policy is being proposed, 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 the case of Senator Natasha Akpoti (Nigeria) where the house of senate voted in favour of her suspension because she petitioned against the sitting Senate President for sexual Harassment.

Even if all the female senators in Nigeria are 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. 

✖️ Dehumanization and stress: Often times, Blacks, Women omen and other marginalised groups who have being 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 they 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 being used as a proof that men in authority abuse power.

A man make mistakes for himself, a woman makes mistakes for her whole gender. 

A man's mistake is a personal behavioural flaw, a woman's mistakes is a collective feminine flaw. 

✖️ TOKENISM gives 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 divide, DEIs, Quota systems and other inclusivity programs easily fall into tokenism because, for the most of times, quota systems exist to lessen the harshness created by oppressive systems, instead of actually over hauling systems that creates breeding grounds for oppression.

✖️ Tokenism ironically reinforces oppression: When President Jonathan introduced the 35% women in ministerial appointment policy, all I heard and saw 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 the men. But of course, that would be called progress in view of the fact 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, I once had a talk with someone who said focus should be on competence and merit not inclusion. This is often the belief of many. They believe DEIs and quota systems 'unmeritoriously' favours the oppressed class and overlooks merit. They do so without considering the fact that, the reason the ruling class are often over-represented in position 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 compare to men. In fact, women up their chances of attracting investors just 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 'marginsalised'. 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 over representation is directly tied to women's deprivation not merit.

This is often the case because banks and investors will not outrightly come out and say "we will give men primary consideration", however, in practice they do. But when women led organisations seek to remedy this problem, they clearly come out and say "we will give women primary consideration", hence, it becomes easy to accuse them of discriminating 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 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 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 grass root rather than prunning the branches. For instance, instead of saying "we give female applicants first consideration", and merely stopping at that, focused should be had to addressing the issue holding women back like unpaid labour, presumption that men are more competent, workplace Harassment etc. If the obstacles are removed, then there would in fact be no need for the DEI programs. 

✅ More holistic approach: While DEI programs 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 creates 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 view point of the marginalised class is at its very best laughable. Solutions should first take cognisance of the view point 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 at that same work place.

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 by reason of gender, work place Harassment etc. 

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 compensated 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, reckon should be had to removing those walls and obstacles that constitutes oppression for them.

- DOGO JOY NJEB.

Dogo Joy Njeb is a practicing lawyer, activist and writer. She is Founder of @sheresonance, a woman empowerment group. 

She spends her free time reading, writing, sleeping or seeing movies with friends and family. 

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