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Show HINCKLEY JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2002/2003 The Utah State Senate: Effects of Tokenism and Implications for Future Gender Parity Ashfey E. DiAna During the 2002 legislative session, women held twenty-one percent of the Utah State Senate seats. This percentage fits within Kanter's (1977) definition of a skewed group and thus opens the Senate to examination using her framework of tokenism. To investigate tokenism in relation to the Senate, I conducted in-depth interviews with five of the six female senators. After analyzing the interview tapes and notes, I found evidence of tokenism, specifically role entrapment. With further examination of the evidence using Kanter, Sapiro's (1990) concept of gender consciousness and Yoder's (1991) criticism of tokenism, I concluded that there was strong evidence of tokenism in the Utah State Senate as well as varying degrees of gender consciousness. Despite evidence in support of Kanter, I agree with Yoder's criticism that Kanter's proposed solution to the problems associated with tokenism is insufficient. Simply increasing the number of the token group, women in this case, will not address cultural bias. To adequately address the systemic and cultural sexism present, women and men must develop gender consciousness, recognize the inherent inequalities in the current political system, and collectively pursue the recruitment and development of women within political party structures and within electoral politics. Gender parity will only be reached in the Utah State Legislature when the barriers associated with tokenism are addressed and the development of gender con- sciousness occurs. INTRODUCTION At the conclusion of the 2002 General Session, the Utah State Senate was composed of twenty-three men and six women; seventy-nine percent of the body was male and twenty-one percent female. Four of the six women were members of the Democratic caucus, which only holds thirty-one percent of the Senate (nine of twenty-nine). This dismal picture for gender parity and equal female participation in the legislative process is worth exploration to better understand current power and gender dynamics and to improve future action to increase female participation in the state legislature. Kanter's (1977) tokenism theory will be utilized in this paper to explore the obstacles facing the six female senators. According to tokenism theory, the female senators face formidable obstacles in fulfilling their duties as legislators AsWey E. DiAna graduated in 2002 with an Honors B.S. in Political Science and as a Service-Learning Scholar. She served a Hinckley internship in the Utah State Senate during the 2000 General Session, and she was the Student Intern Coordinator for the 2001 session. Asliley also managed two legislative campaigns during her university experience. Ashley wouJd like to thank Dr. Peregrine Schwartz-Shea for her guidance. She wouJd also Me to thank the Hinckley Institute staff for their continued support. because of their numerical insignificance and forced one-dimensional gender roles. Kanter argues that women in "skewed" groups (groups where the minority is less than twenty percent of the overall group) face three perceptional phenomena from the dominant group, male senators, which will greatly affect their success as legislators. The first is heightened visibility, where the female senators hold a disproportionate amount of attention compared to the male members of the body. The second is polarization, where the female senators' differences and deviations from the male-defined norms are highlighted and exaggerated. Third is assimilation, where the female senators' attributes are perceptually distorted in order to fit existing generalizations about women. I will spend most of the analysis focusing on the third perceptual phenomena, assimilation. A key component of assimilation is role entrapment, where women's characteristics are used to pigeon hole them into one of four stereotypical roles. These roles limit women's abilities to network and succeed in the specified environment. I will argue that Kanter's tokenism does apply to the power dynamics of the Utah State Senate. I will discuss interviews with the current female senators, which exemplify the role entrapment faced by these elected officials and their attempts to use those roles to create and sustain power. 21 |
