Role Entrapment Research Articles

Token Women: An Empirical Test of Kanter's Hypothesis

In this article we test empirically Rosabeth Kanter's hypothesis that minority achievements are diminished by the underrepresntation of minority persons in majority-dominated work groups. using data on male and female achievements at two law schools with significantly different sex ratios, we find evidence that performance pressure, social isolation, and role entrapment all operate to diminish the achievements of women law students where they are only a small minority of the student body.

Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women

Proportions, that is, relative numbers of socially and culturally different people in a group, are seen as critical in shaping interaction dinamics, and four group types are identified in the basis of varying proportional compositions. "Skewed" groups contain a large preponderance of one type (the numerical "dominants") over another (the rare "tokens"). A framework is developed for conceptualizing the processes that occur between dominants and tokens. Three perceptual phenomena are associated with tokens: visibility (tokens capture a disproportionate awareness share), polarization (differences between tokens and dominants are exaggerated), and assimilation (tokens' attributes are distorted to fit preexisting generalizations about their social type). Visibility generates performance pressures; polarization leads dominants to heighten their group boundaries; and assimilation leads to the tokens' role entrapment. Illustrations are drawn from a field study in a large industrial corporation. Concepts are extended to tokens of all kinds, and research issues are identified.