Rainbow logos fade, but structural barriers remain. True inclusion demands dismantling systems, not collecting symbols. Stop the performance, start the transformation.
Imagine walking through the centre of a large city in June. Shop windows are adorned with rainbows, major banks’ logos on social media feature inclusive flags, and adverts resemble auditions for a remake of the ‘We Are the World’ video. It’s all very nice and all very well. But what happens on July 1st? The rainbows are put back in storage, the logos revert to institutional blue, and corporate policies often go back to being rigid, homogeneous and impervious to real change.
Welcome to the era of performative DE&I (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). An era in which diversity has become social currency, a hashtag to ride and, unfortunately, sometimes a mere marketing strategy. At the heart of this phenomenon lies an insidious and still all too prevalent sociological concept: tokenism.
The ‘Checklist’ Syndrome: what is tokenism?
The term ‘tokenism’ is not new. It was popularised in the 1970s by Harvard sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who studied power dynamics in large companies. Essentially, tokenism is the practice of making a purely symbolic effort to include minority groups (defined by ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age) by recruiting a small number of people from these groups, in order to create the appearance of racial or sexual equality within a workforce.
It’s the ‘Checklist Syndrome’.
A woman on an all-male board? Tick.
A person of colour in the company brochure? Check.
An LGBTQ+ colleague to interview during Pride Month? Check.
When inclusion only goes skin deep, the person hired is not seen as an individual with unique skills, but as a ‘token’, a symbol. Their presence merely serves to validate the company in the eyes of the outside world (“Look how modern we are!”), without giving them any real power to influence organisational culture.
‘Diversity as a commodity’ and ‘woke-washing’
From a sociological point of view, we are witnessing the commodification of identity. Companies, which are rational, profit-oriented entities, have realised that Generation Z and Millennials (who make up the largest share of consumers and the current workforce) don’t just buy products; they buy values.
This is where the marketing mechanism kicks in. If inclusivity sells, then we must appear inclusive. However, changing a company’s deep-rooted culture (dismantling unconscious biases, reviewing promotion processes and ensuring equal pay) is a long, costly and often painful process. It is much easier, faster and cheaper to hire someone to represent the company publicly.
Depending on the cause exploited, this phenomenon is often labelled pink-washing, green-washing, or rainbow-washing, and it creates cognitive dissonance. There is a disconnect between the ‘facade’ (what the company projects to the outside world) and the ‘backstage’ (what employees experience). It is a social charade in which the minority is the unwitting protagonist of a show written by others.
The burden of hypervisibility: the life of the token
But what is it like to live with this condition? Being a ‘token’ comes at a very high psychological and social cost. Sociology teaches us that when a minority is underrepresented within a dominant group, perverse dynamics are triggered.
The first is hypervisibility. If you are the only black woman in a room full of white men, everything you do is amplified. If you make a mistake, it becomes proof that ‘black women are not suited to this role’, rather than just ‘Julia’s’ mistake. The token carries the weight of representing an entire demographic category on their shoulders. This overwhelming pressure often leads to imposter syndrome and burnout.
The second dynamic is forced assimilation. In order to survive in an environment that has only included you for your appearance, but which is not structured to accommodate your diversity of thought, you end up having to play the part that the dominant group expects of you. Paradoxically, to be successful, the token must not be ‘too different’. They must be a ‘palatable’ version of diversity, one that does not shake up the status quo too much.
Additionally, the token is often assigned the so-called ‘unpaid work of diversity’ (or, as I call it in my book, ‘office housework’). This includes being part of the DE&I committee in your spare time, educating colleagues on racial or gender issues and organising events. All of this on top of the job you were hired for. This additional workload rarely leads to promotions.
The result of all this is measurable in data. Many companies that practise tokenism (knowingly or unknowingly) suffer from the ‘revolving door’ phenomenon. They manage to attract diverse talent through appealing marketing campaigns, but they fail to retain it.
People come in, look around, realise that inclusion was only on the letterhead, feel isolated or undervalued, and leave. The company then complains that they cannot find qualified, diverse talent or that they do not integrate well. In reality, the problem isn’t the talent, but the environment. You can’t plant a tropical flower in the tundra and then complain that it doesn’t bloom just because you put up a sign that says ‘Tropical Greenhouse’.
The solution is to move from ‘culture fit’ to ‘culture add’ (we talked about this in another article).
How do we get out of this quagmire of good intentions and poor execution? Organisational sociology suggests a paradigm shift: moving from the concept of ‘culture fit’ to that of ‘culture add’.
For decades, human resources departments have sought candidates who fit perfectly into the existing corporate culture, or have the right ‘culture fit’. This inevitably leads to standardisation: we hire people who think, act and resemble us. Tokenism is the clumsy attempt to insert someone different into this rigid pattern without changing it.
‘Culture Add’, on the other hand, asks, ‘What is missing from our culture? What perspective is not represented at the table?’ The idea is not to collect minorities like Panini stickers, but to understand that cognitive diversity, stemming from different life experiences, brings innovation, more creative problem solving and ultimately better financial results.
Beyond performance: structural inclusion
True inclusion isn’t sexy. It’s not always Instagrammable. It’s dirty, structural work. It means:
- Reviewing decision-making processes: who decides who gets promoted? What are the criteria? Are they objective or based on personal affinity?
- Mentorship and sponsorship: hiring isn’t enough. Pathways must be created to enable people from minority groups to access leadership roles.
- Psychological safety: create an environment where dissent is accepted and being different is not considered “difficult”.
- Data, not anecdotes: measure not only how many ‘diverse’ people are hired, but also their turnover rate, how quickly they are promoted and the pay gap.
Is this the end of hypocrisy?
We are at a cultural crossroads. Consumers and employees are becoming more discerning in their ability to recognise the difference between substance and appearance. Posting an inclusive hashtag on LinkedIn is no longer enough if the board of directors looks like a faded photocopy of 1950.
Overcoming tokenism requires the courage to take a good, hard look at ourselves and admit that inclusion is not just another marketing project to be completed by the end of the fiscal quarter. It is a social transformation. This requires relinquishing some of your privilege to make room for others, not as an act of charity or a PR strategy, but as a fundamental acknowledgement that the complexity of the real world must be reflected within corporate walls.
Until then, every rainbow, every multicultural group photo and every slogan about the ‘corporate family’ will remain just that: a performance. And the public is no longer applauding.