One day one of my old bosses came to me with what he viewed as a brilliant insight: “Jennifer, we’ve been thinking. Now that judges want more diversity in leadership, we think we can get you appointed to lead cases!”

Let’s set aside the more obvious points that diversity is and was hardly a new concept and that, even at that time, there were women far younger than me who were already leading cases. But those were not my strongest reactions. Later in the day, and as my time there continued, I reflected on a deeper level what made the comment so hurtful.

It was hurtful because he was proposing that I become a token. After all, he wasn’t coming to me saying that I could get appointed to lead cases because I was more than capable of doing so (I had been that for over a decade): he was saying that I could get appointed solely because I was a woman. And he didn’t want me appointed because I deserved it and doing it would elevate my career, he was doing it because it would make the firm look good. It was clear that he didn’t value diversity itself, but instead only valued what diversity could provide him. Indeed, we never had another discussion about the subject.

Things like this happen to women—and even more so to women of color—in the legal profession every day. And while stories like this might on the surface seem to be one more mildly amusing story about an out-of-touch old white guy, these types of comments cut much deeper. Let’s talk about why.

Tokenism and Its Harms

Tokenism is when a previously excluded group is hired or promoted as a symbolic gesture towards inclusivity. It’s superficially supporting under-represented groups for the sake of appearance, without providing actual opportunities for those groups to succeed. It’s hardly a new idea: certain employers and types of men have been pretending to support women in the workplace for decades. It’s why diversity initiatives—without the honest intent to effect change—often fail.

As you might imagine, being a token at work, or being perceived as a token, can have long-term consequences on a person’s mental health. A token employee can suffer high levels of depression and stress, and experience feelings of helplessness that can ultimately lead to burnout. The depression and stress can come from multiple places: “token” employees often feel they are expected to behave in ways stereotypically expected from their demographic group. And people hired as tokens are more likely to experience discrimination and sexual harassment than men and women who work in more balanced workplaces.

There are more subtle things that happen to tokens in the workplace too. In 2019 co-authors Aneika Simmons, Marla Baskerville Watkins, and Elizabeth Umphress published an analysis of more than 80 studies in the past 25 years on the consequences of tokenism. They found that those who were solo minorities or one of very few in a workplace faced heavier scrutiny from their higher ups and peers. They saw that token voices get drowned out in deliberations, and that tokens were more likely to be interrupted in meetings. The exceptions? When men entered a traditionally women-dominant field like nursing or teaching (of course).

Tokenism hurts company culture too. It sends the message that the only people “ready” to lead are people that look like the majority, so employers lose out on the talents of diverse employees. I’ve been at places that couldn’t hire diverse candidates because, when candidates checked out our website, they didn’t see anyone who looked like them. Environments without diversity tend to perpetuate themselves: treating a woman as a token may send a message to people of color or LGBTQ-status that they are not welcome either.

How We Get Beyond It

Experts have an easy answer for how employers can get beyond engaging in tokenism: take diversity, equity and inclusion seriously. After all, the answer to performative inclusion is actual inclusion. Such an approach, of course, assumes that an employer wants diversity in the first place. We can see from pictures of partnership classes made up of exclusively white guys that some employers don’t.

The much harder question is how we, as women lawyers, can handle feelings of being a token in the workplace. While it’s less likely these days that we will be considered tokens when we are hired, we may be considered them as we are promoted to levels where there are fewer and fewer women. And we may be called tokens when we try to enter other rooms—such as certain types of specialties—where there aren’t many of us. As women in a male-dominated profession, we will undoubtedly be called tokens at some point—whether to our faces or behind our backs.

For how to handle being a token, I return to my story of Jayne Conroy, who asked Judge Selna to appoint more diverse lawyers to leadership in the Toyota Unintended Acceleration MDL. It’s important to remember that, while women lawyers may be perceived as tokens upon receiving a promotion or an appointment, that perception is usually temporary, before anyone has seen what that woman is capable of doing. Those perceptions are like most perceptions—based more on stereotype than reality. After all, women lawyers at the top of their games have clawed their way to those positions, working harder than any man in a similar position has.

We need to be “tokens” before we will ever assume majority positions in places of power. We need to raise our hands and ask to be counted even if it means doing so elicits eye-rolling.

And, when we inevitably feel isolated standing alone in a man’s world, we must find other women doing the same. It’s why I read stories about women in finance, in sports, and in STEM fields. Because we can take those terrifying first steps when we realize we aren’t the first to have done so.

Ultimately, to survive as “tokens” we need a change in mindset. We are tokens because we’ve been excluded from places, not because we weren’t capable of being in them in the first instance. Anyone who perceives you as a token is doing so because they’ve been working in environments that only contain people who look like them.

Let’s start calling out the people who use the word token, rather than calling out women lawyers who stand alone in rooms full of men. They are trailblazers, not tokens.

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