Understanding and contextualizing the experiences of female local-level rock musicians through tokenism theory

Kanter's (1993, 1977a, 1977b) theory of tokenism predicts that members of underrepresented subgroups in organizations will experience visibility, contrast, and assimilation. Empirical research on tokenism conducted in non-experimental settings has involved members of relatively large work groups and has focused on paid work and the institution of education, to the exclusion of leisure activities. This exploratative study uses interviews of 15 female and male local-level rock musicians to discover if the outcomes that have been documented in studies of occupational tokenism apply to the small group leisure activity of being in a band. The study finds that Kanter's theory applies to women playing rock music. Some of the ways that women in bands with men and women in bands with other women experience the three tokenism processes differ. The study also lends support to Yoder's (1985, 1991, 1994) claim that tokenism is impacted by gender status and occupational inappropriateness.