of this threshold, which Kanter (1977) places at 15 percent based on the workplace she considered, but others argue is much higher in legislatures (Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers 2007; Wolbrecht 2000). The theory predicts that the extent to which legislators value their minority group colleagues depends upon attributable to minority group size. differences in marginal utility The of Groups and Tokenism The theory’s first principles capture the relationship between colleague valuations and group membership. Following Kanter (1977), consider an organization that comprises two groups, a long-standing majority/“in” group (Group A) and a long-standing minority/ “out” group (Group B). Note, however, that the discussion presented here differs from the previous literature in that we take into account all possible proportions of Groups A and B within the larger organization. Although the extant literature discusses what occurs when small minorities become larger minorities, the story presented here goes beyond that point to discuss valuations even as the group grows to become the majority, or even a large majority. The theory “minority” presented here, however, does not take into account Yoder’s (1991) argument that tokenism occurs only when the smaller group is of a lower status. But since there are virtually no legislatures in which men are a small minority, one cannot empirically test this aspect of Yoder’s conception of tokenism in the legislative context. In this sense, then, the unified theory of colleague valuation makes the strong assumption that sexism qua sexism does not exist. Colleague valuation is based entirely on group size rather than on any external conception of a higher or lower status for a particular group. This does not mean, however, that the entire unified theory of colleague valuation is refuted if this assumption is false. This is because accounting for sexism mathematically in the formal model would be a simple matter of including a negative
of this threshold, which Kanter (1977) places at 15 percent based on the workplace she considered, but others argue is much higher in legislatures (Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers 2007; Wolbrecht 2000). The theory predicts that the extent to which legislators value their minority group colleagues depends upon differences in marginal utility attributable to minority group size. The of Groups and Tokenism The theory’s first principles capture the relationship between colleague valuations and group membership. Following Kanter (1977), consider an organization that comprises two groups, a long-standing majority/“in” group (Group A) and a long-standing minority/ “out” group (Group B). Note, however, that the discussion presented here differs from the previous literature in that we take into account all possible proportions of Groups A and B within the larger organization. Although the extant literature discusses what occurs when small minorities become larger minorities, the story presented here goes beyond that point to discuss valuations even as the “minority” group grows to become the majority, or even a large majority. The theory presented here, however, does not take into account Yoder’s (1991) argument that tokenism occurs only when the smaller group is of a lower status. But since there are virtually no legislatures in which men are a small minority, one cannot empirically test this aspect of Yoder’s conception of tokenism in the legislative context. In this sense, then, the unified theory of colleague valuation makes the strong assumption that sexism qua sexism does not exist. Colleague valuation is based entirely on group size rather than on any external conception of a higher or lower status for a particular group. This does not mean, however, that the entire unified theory of colleague valuation is refuted if this assumption is false. This is because accounting for sexism mathematically in the formal model would be a simple matter of including a negative
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