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Tokenism (also known as the Smurfette Principle) 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. Tokenization can be especially apparent when the lone person in a minority group is not only asked to speak for the group, but is consistently asked to speak *about being a member of that group*.

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  • Tokenism
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  • Tokenism (also known as the Smurfette Principle) 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. Tokenization can be especially apparent when the lone person in a minority group is not only asked to speak for the group, but is consistently asked to speak *about being a member of that group*.
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  • Tokenism (also known as the Smurfette Principle) 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. Tokenization can be especially apparent when the lone person in a minority group is not only asked to speak for the group, but is consistently asked to speak *about being a member of that group*. It is possible to accept a job, a position, or a speaking role at a conference in the knowledge that on some level tokenization is occurring or will be perceived to have occurred. The person in that role may be able to do some good and may be well qualified to do the job, however, the lack of authority and/or power, or undermining of authority, associated with tokenization may contribute to eventual Burnout. Emma Jane Hogbin has defined the Unicorn Law as an example of tokenism: "If you are a woman in Open Source you will eventually give a talk about being a woman in Open Source." [1]
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