Female Tokenism: Good or Bad?

On a recent road trip, I discussed with a female friend about female tokenism: the action of deliberately including female members in a community in order to achieve demographic balance. I thought of this action as a facade - a superficial and fruitless attempt at solving a fundamental issue in our society. However, my female friend did not think the same. She thought that by creating equal proportions of female and male members, society would become more integrated by gender equality and there would be gradually greater support for feminism. Through the lens of U.S. history, I shall analyze female tokenism in the earlier stages of the Feminist Movement.

Building off of Natalie's post on "Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique," Friedan, a popular leader of the Feminist Movement, describes this "emptiness or unfulfillment" that results from female domesticity. Her support for the female in the workplace, combined with the emotional impact of her book on the female community, encouraged women to pursue their freedom from the household. In this prospect, she seemed to support female tokenism if it did become a reality.

Even earlier than that, during the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848, the Feminist Movement had supported female tokenism. The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions stated that "[men] has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration." This suggests that the declaration focused on more deeply integrating women into American society. This includes, of course, employment in a variety of industries. 

The history of the Feminist Movement, as we can see, followed a trend of female tokenism. However, we see that the main reason behind supporting female tokenism was the lack of female representation in industries. There did not exist a system which deliberately recruited women in order to balance the gender ratio. Society was pressured by the Feminist Movement, which demanded equality of opportunity, to provide opportunities based on gender. In the end, the system is still biased based on gender. From the examples of Friedan and the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, it is clear that America's oldest social movement - the Feminist Movement, is aimed at reversing sexism by starting on surface-level issues and work their way down. Is this method of reformation effective and beneficial to American society? How should we approach this problem from its roots rather than its leaves? One of the oldest feminist arguments seems to suggest a viable solution.

Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of America, suggested in her letter to John Adams that a key component of female representation in American society was an intellectual discussion between men and women. She believed that women had the same intellectual capacity as men, and that is certainly true in our educated world today. With a 98.6% literacy rate and 84% of high school graduation rate, America is more than capable of fulfilling Abigail Adams' dream of constructing a system of intellectual exchange between men and women. There are already multiple organizations in the United States supporting this kind of discussions, including the National Organization for Women, which contributed immensely to the Feminist Movement during the 60s. How does this help solve female tokenism? The "intellectual conversation" first proposed by Abigail Adams included a better education system which encourages men and women to learn about each other more deeply, including their cultural differences and traditional expectations. However, instead of enforcing these expectations, such a system would discourage them, allowing the female group and the male group to feel more comfortable with each other. Instead of maintaining or even amplifying the social tensions between women and men by enforcing a balanced gender ratio, this solution seems to tackle the gender issue through its very cultural and traditional foundation.