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Hospitality firms adopted diverse hiring policies and public declarations of support for LGBTQ+ causes through brand activism. The impact of activism on LGBTQ+ employees’ workplace experiences has been ambiguous. This study aims to examine the hospitality and tourism employees’ perceptions of gay and lesbian leaders as token-hires among hospitality employees and the spillover effect on company’s motives for hiring the leaders. This study further explores LGBTQ+ employees’ reactions to token-hiring as a form of activism, and how workplace interactions as passing/revealing LGBTQ+ individuals shaped their career development.

This research adopted a sequential mixed-methods design. An experiment examines how employees judge gay vs lesbian hospitality leaders as token hires, contingent on their own gender identity. It further tests the conditional mediation of tokenism on company’s egoistic motives for activism. A qualitative study explores the reactions to token-hiring as activism from the perspective of LGBTQ+ leaders who reflect on their own careers and workplace experiences.

Tokenism in the hospitality workplace is recognized as the phenomenon attributed to groups at the intersection of identities (e.g. gay men). Findings demonstrate the spillover effect of tokenism perceptions of gay male leaders by other men on company’s egoistic motives for activism. This effect is not observed for a lesbian female leader. Results from interviews suggest that hospitality and tourism LGBTQ+ employees predominantly take the post-gay vs political approach when managing their sexual identities at work and feel ambivalent toward token-hiring as LGBTQ+ brand activism.

This research contributes to understanding workplace challenges of LGBTQ+ employees and how they are perceived by others contingent on gender identity. It also explores the role of tokenism in their experiences.

Situated in the context of India, where women’s representation on corporate boards remains low, this study aims to explore whether and how tokenism impacts the behaviours of female directors.

The boardroom experiences and perceptions of 14 women directors are explored through semi-structured interviews and analysed using an inductive and interpretive process. Also, to get a counter perspective and avoid the social desirability bias from the women participants’ responses, 16 men directors are interviewed.

The study finds that, as gender minorities, women directors' visibility on boards can create performance pressures on these women. To counter gender-based prejudices, women directors consciously alter their behaviours and project both male and female traits consistent with the director role. By doing so, women directors overcome tokenistic stereotypes and are accepted as part of the director in-group, irrespective of their numeric representation on the board.

The research has implications for governments attempting to increase women’s board presence through affirmative actions and for firms aiming to improve the gender diversity of their board composition.

These findings present an alternative perspective on women directors’ board behaviour by exploring the applicability of Western trends on tokenism and critical mass in the context of India, adding to the vast body of literature concerned with minorities on corporate boards.

The purpose of this study was to examine the boundary conditions of Kanter's (1977) tokenism theory as applied to the gender wage gap. The authors aimed to discover if there was a point where the relationship between the percentage of women in a job category and the gender wage gap changed, and, if so, where the threshold was located and what was the nature of the shift in relationship.

The authors used the Andrews’ (1993) threshold effects technique. Using 22 separate years of publicly available Canadian wage data, they examined the relationship between the percentage of females in 40 unique occupational categories and the female-to-male earnings ratio (for a total of 880 observations).

The results showed the existence of a threshold point, and that early gains in percent female within an occupation, up to approximately 14% female in the occupation, associate with strong gains in the female-to-male wage ratio. However, beyond that point, further gains in percent female associate with smaller improvements in the female-to-male wage ratio.

The findings are useful in understanding the dynamics of occupational group gender composition, potential theoretical reasons for the nuances in relationship, as well as opportunities that may facilitate more equitable outcomes.

The results show that, though improvements were made above and below the threshold point, enhancements in the wage gap are actually larger when there are less women in the job category (e.g. tokens).

This study aims to unpack the progress of board gender diversity among the 3,000 largest US listed firms by market capitalization (i.e. Russell 3000 Index). This study extrapolates four classifications of firms based on the number of women in the boardroom: zero women, one or two women, three plus women and gender balanced. The purpose of this study is to examine where progress has and has not been made, why firms plateau and an agenda for the future.

This study first provides a summative overview of the literature on the benefits of board gender diversity. It then examines progress according to the four classifications, each of which have theoretical underpinnings for whether or not firms can reap the strategic benefits of gender-diverse boardrooms.

Several indices of US publicly traded companies now have women holding between 30% and 33% of the seats in the boardroom. By examining the spread of women on boards according to the four classifications, this study extrapolates three key insights: firms experiencing tokenism (i.e. one or two women in the boardroom) do not have enough women to reap the strategic benefits of diverse boardrooms; firms that have reached a critical mass (three women in the boardroom) are at an impasse and may risk plateauing; and gender-balanced firms are elevated to the status of being role models for other firms. Calls for action and associated action plans accompany these insights.

This study reminds managers and directors of the strategic benefits of gender-diverse boards and offers three critical insights that boards can use to classify what stage they are at on the path toward board gender equality. Based on their classification, calls for action and action plans offer guidance to firms.

This study shifts away from focusing on the average percentage of board seats held by women across all firms and offers new insights on the progress that firms have made according to the number of women in their boardroom.

The Indian Companies Act (2013) mandates the appointment of at least one woman director for large publicly listed companies in India in order to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. The study analyzes the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms, board gender diversity, and ownership structure on dividend payout decisions in an emerging economy like India. The study uses data collected for nonfinancial firms listed on NSE (National Stock Exchange) 500 in India from the period 2008 to 2020. Contrary to the evidence from developed economies, the study finds that increased female representation and greater proportion of female independent directors on the board are associated with lower dividend payout decisions in the Indian context. As it stands, the female representation on corporate boards in India is woefully low and appears to be mere tokenism. The study explores the role of regulation in increasing gender diversity on corporate boards and offers insights from an emerging economy where such a regulation is in place.

This chapter offers a critical examination of children and young people’s participation in Australia’s official celebrations of the International Year of the Child (IYC) in 1979. While the global objectives of IYC strongly reflected ‘protectionist’ or ‘welfarist’ approaches to children’s rights, the chapter shows that, at a local level, the year was also shaped by alternative notions of children’s liberation that had emerged in the preceding decade and a new emphasis on children’s voices by policymakers, advocates and researchers. The chapter explores how these ideas were incorporated at a national level before closely examining three initiatives in New South Wales (NSW), the Australian state where the emphasis on children’s voices was taken furthest. The initiatives examined are: (1) the establishment of a Kids Council to provide input into the state’s response to IYC; (2) the organisation of a Youth Forum for high school students; and (3) the provision of funding for the ‘Speakout’ camp for children in out-of-home ‘care’. None of these initiatives approached the radical forms of democratic participation envisioned by liberationists. Nonetheless, they attest to the wider credence given to ideas of children’s self-determination in this period, well before the formalisation of children’s ‘participation’ rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989). The selected case studies also provide context to more recent debates over the inclusion of children and young people’s voices in decision-making processes, demonstrating how concerns around tokenism, exclusivity and adult-centricism manifested and were navigated at a time when the concepts of participation and voice remained relatively novel.

Board gender diversity is an important component of sound corporate governance. This paper aims to examine the influence that female board directors in listed firms in Korea have on effective investment decisions.

The authors used 4,117 data items related to finance and governance from FnGuide for listed Korean firms between 2014 and 2019. The authors analyzed the data using Heckman’s two-stage regression, controlling the ordinary least square regression and endogeneity, to resolve the problem of selection bias. Gender diversity was measured using the existence/absence of female directors on boards (dummy variable) and the ratio of female directors on boards (BLAUt-1 index and SHANNONt-1 index).

Female board directors influenced the suppression of under-investment for the enhancement of corporate value, but not the suppression of over-investment. Additionally, female directors played a complementary role in under-investment to mitigate corporate risk, but not in intra-industry competition. Kanter’s classification of board types indicated that the skewed board and tilted board have a significant effect on under-investment and play a complementary role in corporate risk.

First, this study is about only Korean firms. Second, this study relies on corporate actual data but does not account for the factors that affect human behavior or how such behaviors can evolve. Third, the authors included as many appropriate variables as possible when setting the research model, but there may be missing correlation variables.

The authors’ results have policy implications, as they can be used as a basis to establish policies related to gender diversity in Korea, where there are currently insufficient empirical studies on women’s participation on the boards of directors. Moreover, with the amended FISCMA, which mandates that firms must hire at least one female director, Korean firms need to implement practical employment policies that can benefit firms, by selecting capable female directors rather than engaging in tokenism.

This study empirically examines gender diversity in the boards of Korean firms that have implemented the female quota system for the first time and considers female board directors’ roles in undertaking effective corporate investment decisions. This insight can guide change management and help firms avoid tokenism – a possible corporate response to pressures arising from the debates about feminism in Korea and gender diversity legislation.

The aim of this study is to understand how board structure, size of audit committee (AC), gender diversity and ownership structure influence banks’ performance in Pakistan. This study also aims to examine how various dimensions of governance differently affect the different measures of bank performance.

This study used panel estimation techniques to quantify the impact of various elements of corporate governance on bank performance by taking annual data of 19 Pakistani banks for the period 2013–2020. The corporate governance is measured by board size, CEO duality, AC size, ownership structure and gender diversity. To get the robust results, this study measures bank performance by considering different indicators, namely, return on assets, earning per share, technical efficiency (TE) and total factor productivity. The empirical investigation is based on several well-known and well-accepted governance theories such as the agency theory, the stewardship theory, the tokenism/critical mass theory and the information asymmetry theory.

The findings of the study reveal that the size of board and ACs both significantly improve profitability and productivity, whereas they decrease TE. Further, the findings suggest that most of the indicators of gender diversity significantly deteriorate the performance of banks. However, ownership structure significantly improves banks’ earnings per share and TE. This study further illustrates that CEO’s duality does not have any significant impact on bank performance. This finding holds true for all the performance measures considered for this study.

The findings are of great importance to various stakeholders, especially to policymakers to know about the factors influencing different measures of performance. Specifically, based on these findings, they can devise the result-oriented strategies to enhance the financial and real performance of banks. The findings also suggest that both investors and owners should take into consideration the governance indicators while evaluating banks’ performance by using accounting, market-based, efficiency and productivity measures.

This research adds to the vast body of existing knowledge about the effectiveness of corporate governance by investigating how the different dimensions of corporate governance and gender diversity influence bank performance in a developing country, namely, Pakistan. Further, this study elaborates the domestic rules/regulations, governance theories and governance framework and practices and tries to link the empirical findings with them for better understanding the role of governance in determining the performance of the banking sector of Pakistan.

Do women contribute to performance of companies on which they serve as board of directors? Many prior studies examine this issue, but no consensus is reached on the benefits of women taking on leadership positions. The present study considers this thorny issue from a slightly different perspective. Does the association between gender diversity and business performance vary across sectors and economic cycles?

The sample for this study was derived from the firms included in the S&P Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) 300 Index, and the study period of 2004–2016 allowed authors to consider the effects of different sectors as well as different economic cycles on the relationship between gender diversity of boards and business performance. The authors consider the Australian context, which is somewhat unique from the other Western countries, as quotas on boards of directors are not made mandatory and the corporate governance practices are principle-based rather than rule-based.

Employing panel data models, at the aggregate level, the authors find no evidence of board gender diversity impacting business performance. Consideration of sectoral differences and economic cycles in the empirical analyses yielded additional insights. In particular, gender diversity has a beneficial association with performance for businesses in the services and financial sectors after the changes to corporate governance guidelines relating to diversity in 2010. These economic benefits, however, are not evidenced in the resources sector.

These findings offer support for critical mass and resource dependence theories.

The findings of this study have implications for inclusion and diversity policies of businesses and the society. Specifically, the findings offer support for gender diversity of corporate boards of directors.

This study highlights that women bring their unique skills and experiences to create economic value in sectors where they traditionally have more experience and opportunities.

The scarcity of women in advertising creative departments has been reported globally, particularly in creative managerial roles. This study goes a step beyond this evidence since this paper aims to test whether having at least one token woman in creative managerial positions (token+) may be associated with a larger presence of females in low-level creative jobs compared to creative departments led only by male creative managers.

A content analysis of the credit forms of 839 Spanish campaigns released in 2019 was conducted to determine the gender composition of 116 creative departments with more than three professionals.

Generalized Poisson Regressions indicated that when at least a token woman is present in a creative management role within agency networks, the number of females in low-level positions doubles with respect to creative departments led only by male managers. This relation was not found for independent agencies, though. The results are discussed under the lens of critical mass theory, attraction paradigm and homophily theory.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time in the literature that the relation among the number of token+ advertising female creative managers and the amount of females in lower-level creative positions is tested. This research is also original because the sample is from a non-Anglo-Saxon country. Moreover, the use of the Generalized Poisson Regressions technique is another novelty of this paper.