The Westernization of black women in the US and throughout the Diaspora, via ideological apparatuses such as education and the labour market, is symptomatic of the West’s attempt to interpellate and embourgeois them, post the 1970s, to fit, converge, with their role as professional managers and service workers in the globalization efforts, for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white male counterparts, in spite of some obstacles and roadblocks. This Westernization of black women by global capital, leading to what Paul C. Mocombe calls black feminine patriarchy, is not liberatory; instead, it is integrative, oppressive, exploitative, and a threat to all life on earth as black women become feminine patriarchs recursively organizing and reproducing the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of their former white enslavers despite its effects on black family life, the climate, and all life on earth.

Keywords: ideological domination, capitalism, underclass, globalization, feminism, theory, phenomenological structuralism, structurationism

The Westernization of black women in the US and throughout the Diaspora, via ideological apparatuses such as education and the labour market, is symptomatic of the West’s attempt to interpellate and embourgeois them, post the 1970s, to fit, converge, with their role as consumers, professional managers, and service workers in the globalization efforts, for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white male counterparts, in spite of some obstacles and roadblocks. This Westernization of black women by global capital, as alluded to above, leads to what Mocombe¹ calls black feminine patriarchy, and it is not liberatory; instead, it is integrative, oppressive, exploitative, and a threat to all life on earth. That is to say, black feminine patriarchy is a fascist attempt to interpellate and embourgeois, converge, via education and the labour/consumer markets where they are given the skills and cultural capital of the neoliberal framework, the black female and their bodies, which is then commodified and celebrated as a market for capital accumulation by the upper-class of white male owners and high-level executives. The latter, subsequently, use the educated black women amongst them (whose mantra becomes equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution) as a comprador bourgeoisie to serve as middle managers for both the capitalist world-system in general and the black female population in particular, which is structurally differentiated and positioned as a market with needs, desires, and wants to be served by the more educated and entrepreneurially driven amongst them, despite the fact that their integration or convergence and Westernization threatens all life on earth given the liberal logic of economic growth and market constitution, which adversely impacts the climate and ecosystem of the earth, by which they are assimilated in the neoliberal framework. The case of the United Kingdom will speak to this process, which has already transpired in the United States and elsewhere where black American women are paraded in the political systems of the country to both serve its imperial interests and as role models for other black women throughout the globe where their overrepresentation in the media apparatus of America is disseminated amongst those similarly, and racially, situated for the purpose of socialization, acculturation, and consumption.

Background of the problem

Feminist theory attempts to understand the status and condition of women in society while simultaneously working to offer solutions to their situations. Four theoretical traditions characterize feminist theorizing: gender difference, dominated by cultural, biological, institutional, interactional, and phenomenological feminism; gender inequality, pushed forth by liberal feminists; gender oppression, supported by psychoanalytic and radical feminists; and structural oppression, pushed forth by social feminists and intersectional theorists.

Gender difference theorists recognize that women are biologically different from their male counterparts, which influences both their structural positions and worldviews, i.e., women have distinctive standards for ethical judgment, caring attention as a mode of women’s consciousness, different achievement motivation patterns, a female style of communication, women’s capacity for openness to emotional experience, women’s fantasies of sexuality and intimacy, and women’s lower levels of aggressive behavior and greater capacity for creating peaceful coexistence. For gender difference theorists the inclusion of feminine practices in the structure of society are keys to resolving the subordination of women.

Gender inequality theorists, against gender difference theorists, focus on the unequal treatment of women in Western society, which they attribute not to biology but to their structural positions. For gender inequality theorists the equal treatment (equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution) of women to their similarly situated male counterparts is a key to changing the conditions of women in Western society.

Gender oppression theorists highlight the patriarchal domination and oppression of women, and argue for the transmogrification of patriarchal societal institutions (to matrifocality) as key to liberating women.

Finally, structural oppression theorists focus on the overall social location of women within capitalism as key to understanding their status in society. Like gender inequality theorists, the structural oppression theorists seek to resolve gender issues by fighting for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with white men within the “social class language game” of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism.¹ All four positions are problematic as they fail to consider that women in society are a product of the differentiating effects of the social structure, and their gender identity does not offer an alternative counter-hegemonic discourse to its systemic tenets and problematics. Hence women in society seek simply to emulate the practices of their male elites, which makes them feminine men, which characterizes third wave feminism in the contemporary West. The emergence of black feminine patriarchy in the United States and United Kingdom, within what Mocombe² calls the theory of phenomenological structuralism, clearly demonstrates the aforementioned position.

Mocombeian phenomenological structuralism, which is a structurationist theory that views the constitution of society, human identity, and social agency as a duality and dualism, views all four positions on their own as incomplete descriptions and explanations for not only understanding the social status of women in society, but the contemporary rise of what the author is calling feminine patriarchy to describe the third wave of the feminist movement that black women partake in.¹

Mocombeian phenomenological structuralism posits that societal and agential constitution are a result of power relations, interpellation, and socialization or embourgeoisiement via five systems, i.e., mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse, which are reified as a social structure or what Mocombe calls a “social class language game” by persons, power elites, who control the means and modes of production in a material resource framework. Once interpellated and embourgeoised by these five systems, which are reified as a social structure and society, social actors recursively (re) organize, reproduce, and are differentiated by the rules of conduct of the social structure, which are sanctioned by the power elites who control the means and modes of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse in a material resource framework. Hence, societal and agential constitution are both a duality and dualism: a dualism given the reification of the social structure via the five systems; and a duality given the internalization of the rules of the five systems, which become the agential initiatives or praxes of social actors. Difference, or alternative social praxis, in Mocombe’s structuration theory, phenomenological structuralism, is not structural differentiation as articulated by traditional structurationists; instead, it is a result of actions arising from the deferment of meaning and ego-centered communication given the interaction of two other structuring structures (physiological drives of the body and brain; and phenomenal properties of subatomic particles that constitute the human subject) during the interpellation and socialization or embourgeoisiement of social actors throughout their life span or cycle, which produces alternative praxis that is exercised at the expense of the threat these practices may pose to the ontological security of social actors in the social structure or society.

Mocombe’s theoretical framework is a universal framework that makes no gender, racial, or ethnic distinctions in its application. Hence, applying Mocombe’s conceptualization to the constitution of the female identity and theorizing about them, his understanding is that feminine consciousness, praxis, and pride in the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social structure of the West rests on the interpellation and embourgeoisiement of biological women to be agents of the Protestant Ethic without serving as power elites in the social structure or society. Feminist theorizing is a particular struggle, which does not attack or intersect with the overall universality of Western society. It only attacks its particular conception and treatment of women, which are not allowed to serve as power elites. The absurdity of which (feminist theorizing) is fully articulated in the gender oppression camp, which, in its most radical positions, radical and psychoanalytical feminism, want to replace patriarchy with a matriarchy that highlights the particularity of feminine difference, which emerges from the universality of the social class language game, in a national position of femaleness at the expense of the overall universal structure of society. In other words, women assume the structurally prescribed differentiated identity of femaleness, as articulated and reified by men, to constitute an alternative form of system and social integration, i.e., matriarchy. The latter is an absurdity in that societal constitution is based not on its connection to the material resource framework; instead, it is a particular reaction to, and inversion of, the particular application of the universality of the social structure or rules of conduct that are sanctioned in order to convict the society, under masculine rule, for not identifying with its universal values. In essence, women from this perspective are only virtue signaling in order to participate in the society on equal footing with their white male counterparts. Hence, in the end, women, fighting for the recognition of their differences, equal rights, or against patriarchy, regardless of their “isms,” simply do so by assuming the liberal agential initiatives and ideals of their male counterparts in order to achieve equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with them.

For Mocombe, in other words, women, as highlighted by the gender difference perspective, are biologically different from men, and this difference is institutionalized in the overall mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse of society to recursively organize and reproduce women who internalize and reproduce this difference as their practical consciousness. Hence women, once interpellated and embourgeoised by society, participate in their own oppression as they recursively organize and reproduce the ideals of the society for themselves in their praxis as their practical consciousness. They either seek to recursively organize and reproduce their structurally differentiated differences in the society for acceptance (the gender difference position); in a national position (standpoint theory) of their own (the gender oppression position), celebrating their difference as an alternative form of system and social integration, i.e., matriarchy, outside of the greater metaphysical system, which produced the difference; or attempt to recursively organize and reproduce the masculine ideals and practices of the society as women for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution (the gender inequality and structural oppression positions) with their male counterparts. Third wave feminism is dominated by the latter form of system and social integration and oppression under (neo) liberal Protestant globalization. The majority of women, contemporarily, in the age of neoliberal globalization, are pushing for integration and equality in the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism as gender neutral agents of the protestant ethic against any other alternative forms of system or social integration, which renders their historical activism dialectical, oppressive, and exploitative; they, paradoxically, reify, commodify, and glorify their sexual female identity as what Mocombe calls feminine men, female agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, seeking to hold power positions in the society like their male counterparts by recursively organizing and reproducing the (neoliberal Protestant) rules of conduct that are sanctioned, for men, in the society, not change its universal orientation, i.e., form of system and social integration. Third-wave feminism in the age of neoliberal globalization is thus dominated by (neo) liberal feminine men, feminine patriarchy.

Black women, like their white counterparts, within this context, are black feminine patriarchs, female agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, seeking equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white male and female counterparts. However, unlike white women, the structurally differentiated identities of black women as highlighted by white men and women are reified as a market for capital accumulation in neoliberal globalization. The case of the United Kingdom (UK) will highlight how black women became black feminine men through their interpellation and embourgeoisiement via the ideological apparatuses of education and the labor and consumer markets.

Black women and education

In neoliberal globalization (1970s to the present), given the financialization and service turn of economies in the West, education and the labor/consumer markets in several ways are the paths that often lead to success (equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution); and have been a key motivating factor for Black women's entrepreneurially and academic gains, especially in higher education, as they are interpellated and embourgeoised by the upper-class of (white-male) owners and high-level executives to serve global capital in the labor/consumer/service markets as both a comprador bourgeoisie and commodified market for capital accumulation. In other words, black women are structurally differentiated in Western society as either poor working class black women defined by their structurally differentiated other identity (lack of education, poor, improvisational, musical, lazy, superstitious, welfare queens, ghetto, etc.,), or educated middle/upper class agents of the Protestant Ethic who are indistinguishable, aside from skin-color, from their white female counterparts who they, along with white men, seek equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with. In Western societies, in other words, black women are socialized, via education and the labor/consumer markets, to assume the practical consciousness of the latter, black embourgeoised women, while serving as role models for the former, black poor working and under class women, whose practical consciousness as highlighted by white men in postindustrial societies have been reified for consumption and capital accumulation whereby the entrepreneurially-minded amongst them may become embourgeois by servicing the beauty and entertainment needs of their structurally differentiated racial class compatriots, which is now a market led by black American women who, globally, serve as the power elites of the commodified market. This same process holds true for black British women who seek equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white female and male counterparts via education and the labor market where they are either heavily influenced by black American embourgeois women who are represented in churches, academia, politics, etc., or their poor underclass counterparts whose practical consciousness are represented by black American female athletes, entertainers, and ghetto dwellers.

According to the figures on progression in higher education by the Office for Students (2020) in Britain, the most significant undergraduate entrants for 2018-2019 was from the majority White ethnic group with 71.2 per cent and the remainder from a minority ethnic background. The majority of entrants, in general, were female (56.1 per cent). It is difficult to give a precise figure of Black female students as British studies do not always provide numbers regarding individual ethnicities, and even when they do, they do not consider gender. One such study that does is Ivy's³ quantitative survey of 427 sixth form colleges of 18 years old students in Leicester found the most considerable growth in applications for the 2006 and 2007 intake came from Black students; these were mainly Africans whose number was more significant than Whites for the last five years. Ivy's study, which provides both ethnic and gender specifications, confirms Connor et al.'s earlier survey that reports the high participation rates of Black women in higher education. Of the total 127,700 entrants, aggregated and based on ethnicity, a total of 70 per cent African Caribbean women attended university, twice that of African Caribbean men of 36 percent, which were slightly higher than White males, 34 percent. A similar finding occurs for African American women who graduate at twice the rates of African American men and these women enroll at college at the same rate as White men,² 2016. Evidently, African Caribbean and African American women are making academic strides. Whilst access to higher education in Britain is not the issue for many Black women; the African Caribbean group tend to be concentrated in less prestigious universities.⁴ In contrast, Ivy³ points to Africans as more likely to apply for and be accepted at top universities. Given that his study was also based on roughly equal numbers across the genders, we can infer those African women are also more likely to attend top universities than their Caribbean counterparts. A different pattern also emerges for the African group, where 75 percent of women and 70 per cent of men participated in higher education. Worthy of note are the findings of the collaborative Manchester University & Joseph Rowntree⁵ joint study that Black Africans are among the highest attaining degree holders after the Chinese and Indians; significantly, of all ethnic groups: "Black African people were the least likely to have no qualifications" [including women] (p.2).

The Office for Students indicates that the proportion of White postgraduate entrants has declined concerning postgraduate studies. For example, in 2010-11, 80.9 per cent of postgraduate entrants were White compared to 74.4 percent in 2018-19. There has been an equivalent increase in non-White students. During the last eight years, Black students had the most significant increase in postgraduate entrance, rising from 5.8 per cent of postgraduate entrants in 2010-11 to 8.1 per cent in 2018-19. Given our previous discussion on the high participation rates of Black females in higher education, we can deduce that there is a reasonably high probability that they are more likely to continue with postgraduate studies. This British pattern is also reflected amongst black women in the American context. African American women account for 63 percent and 71 percent, respectively, of the number of graduate and professional degrees awarded to all African Americans.² In fact, according to these researchers, both African Caribbean and African American women, compared to their male peers, are more likely to achieve status, social mobility and pursue economic gain through the education route.

Interestingly enough, in the United Kingdom, many West Africans, unlike their black American and Caribbean counterparts, historically pursued higher education, sometimes unhindered by undue child-care concerns, especially as children were either fostered or sent back home.⁶

This point is critical to note because the well-established culture of education among West Africans in Britain laid the foundation subsequently for many West African parents to serve as role models, armed with a better understanding of the workings of the British education system. Thus, many contemporary West African pupils, particularly girls, have inherited educational capital. It is possibly a causal effect for the high achieving students of West African origin, highlighted in the research by Demie et al.⁷ It can be argued that teachers may converse more positively with West African mothers, as they tend to be highly educated compared with other Black groups such as Somalis and Congolese, for whom there may be an additional language barrier.

Black women and the labor market

These educational gains (since the 1970s) amongst Black women in both the US and UK context have transferred to the labor and consumer markets where, although they are more likely to be labelled working class, their educational attainments have given them middle class professional managerial jobs (as teachers, nurses, lawyers, administrators, and business owners) and lifestyles, which in spite of some inequalities, has reified the black female body as both a commodity (a market to be served by the more successful amongst them) for capital accumulation and identity constitution in the United Kingdom and elsewhere via the “black girl magic” mantra of the former First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. They have come to serve as both a market for capital accumulation and a comprador (administrative) bourgeoisie fighting within the social structure for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white male counterparts as they leave their less-educated black male counterparts behind in the neoliberal framework.

The focus of black women in neoliberal globalization, in other words, as an interpellated and embourgeoised comprador bourgeoisie, via the ideological apparatus of education, has been fighting inequality for access to, and growth of, the postindustrial service labor market not to offer an alternative form of system and social integration in the face of their inequalities, climate change, and pending ecological devastations caused by capitalist relations of production. Deindustrialisation and the move to a service economy have informed the labor market landscape driven by neoliberal globalisation and technological innovations. This, in turn, has contributed to rising wage inequality and the polarisation of employment. Women's ever-increasing participation in the labor market and issues such as workplace diversity have become central concerns for black women and employers, the upper-class of white-male owners and high-level executives, not the quest for an alternative form of system and social integration. (The workplace is no longer a male province. Employment rates for women in the United Kingdom were 53 percent in 1971 compared to 71 percent in 2018, although there are variations across ethnic groups. The shifts to more egalitarian social attitudes and the growth of the service industry have increased female labor force participation. As Goos & Manning⁸ observe, this relates to the increasing educational achievement of women in general and black women in particular).

Yet for the interpellated and embourgeoised black women and their white allies, an examination of Black women's status in the British labor market reveals their continued experience of discrimination and disadvantage in their places of work amidst their increasing participation and elevation.⁹ They are often viewed in negative stereotypes in the workplace compared with other females, irrespective of their ethnicity. For instance, Brescoll¹⁰ tentatively explores professional female leaders in the United States across ethnicities and concludes that there is a perception of the 'angry Black woman.' Even a show of a mild form of anger by Black women is often interpreted as her being angrier than displayed. Much of the literature focuses on the gap or 'penalty' between each ethnic group and the British White majority ethnic population.¹¹

Hence, for the white power elites and their black allies, the participation rates of Black women have to be set against the national picture of women's employment according to ethnicity given these discriminatory effects, not the system itself. In terms of the participation rates of Black women aged 16-64 in the labor force, it would appear that the rates for Black women are relatively high with 68 per cent (Office for National Statistic figures, 2020). This compares to the lower rates reported for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women with 40 and 37.4 percent, respectively. However, Black women's participation rate is below White women, employed at 75 percent and Indian women with 70 percent. Historically, Black women tend to have higher employment rates than women of other ethnic groups such as Pakistanis or Bangladeshi. However, it appears that religious affiliation partially explains the employment penalty¹¹ for the latter groups. However, religion alone is not the only additional factor for the 'penalty' experienced by Somalian women. Studies such as Mitton & Aspinall¹² report on the low levels of employment among Somali women, 14 percent, in contrast to the relatively high levels of employment among Nigerians and Zimbabweans with 60 and 69 percent respectively; figures from the latest Office for National Statistic (2020) suggest that all Black female groups were behind White British women who had 72 per cent. According to Cheung,¹¹ second-generation ethno-religious minorities in Britain continue to suffer substantial employment penalties in the labor market, and visible minorities, including Caribbean, African and Muslim women, suffer the most considerable penalties.

The seemingly high participation in the labor market for some Black women, such as those from a Caribbean background, is not without challenge,¹³ provide regional variations for Black women's employment based on the African Caribbean female population. Reynolds¹⁴ posits that their collective status as 'workers,' a direct consequence of the combined effects of slavery and colonialism meant that Black women were positioned as a source of inexpensive and flexible labor. She also argues that the collective struggle of Black women in the British labor market is also revealed in the ways that these women continue to collectively mobilize themselves locally and nationally to challenge their shared experience of discrimination in their places of employment.

Despite the active participation of some Black women in the labor market, there are still issues of unemployment. Buckner, Yeandle & Botcherby¹³ find evidence of Black Caribbean women being twice as likely to be unemployed compared to White British women. Similarly, Somali women have high levels of unemployment and economic inactivity, according to Mitton & Aspinall.¹² A total of 12 percent compared to 4 percent of White British women in their study were unemployed. As they write:

The Black African migrant group with the highest unemployment rates was Somalis. Somali women had high levels of economic inactivity. A logistic regression analysis showed that unlike other Black Africans, an 'ethnic penalty' existed for Somalis even after other factors affecting employment such as language competency, health, age, work experience, religion and marital status had been taken into account (pp. 4-5).

As a backdrop, there has been a marked increase in unemployment in Britain over the past century, particularly in areas of older heavy industries in town and cities in the north of England, Scotland, and Wales. The prevailing images of the male and working-class, abandoning derelict and deserted factories, have informed the discourses of unemployment and the unemployed. Showunmi's¹⁵ enlightening work vividly portrays the social characteristics of unemployment in contemporary Britain by referencing Black and other minority women in various localities in England, including the prosperous south and the London conurbation. Using 'authentic' voices, she recounts the harrowing experiences these women encounter in finding employment.

Even though many Caribbean people arrived in Britain with skills and qualifications, these were customarily identified as unacceptable in the United Kingdom, leading many to take the least desirable jobs, which inevitably impacted their income. Dodgson¹⁶ captures the experience of the Windrush women from the Caribbean who migrated to Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s: Life was much harder for women than it was for men. I used to have to take the two children to the child-minder and go to work in the factory – I had to catch the bus at half-past five...I come back and use the coal fire. They rent you a room but you can't do anything...sometimes you had to hide the iron...You think it is little hardness we suffer in this country (p. 64).

Black women historically had fewer options in the labor market despite the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, banning discrimination based on sex or marital status, including employment. Professionally, some White women moved upwards economically, undoubtedly due to the Women's Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s influencing public opinion of women's rights. Yet, the employment needs of Black women have never fully been addressed. Bryan, Dadzie & Scafe¹⁷ recount some of the difficulties of migrant women drawn to the 'mother land' in the middle of the twentieth century. Among other aspects of life, the authors illustrate the unmet career aspirations of the second generation. Some of the continued challenges these women experience in their career choices can also be seen in the third and fourth generations in the twenty-first century.

A significant issue for these women is that the labor market segregation is horizontal in that individuals are restricted to specific occupations and vertical, restricting individuals to the lower levels of an organization. It has been argued that young Black women, like other minorities, view their employment trajectory in traditional ways. Many young women, in general, are still confined to hairdressing, retail, and the social care and health professions. Their educational experiences provide few opportunities for challenging stereotypical ideas of male and female occupations. Young Black women choose careers that are both 'safe' and feminized options and rely on traditional official routes rather than family and friends, unlike some of their White counterparts.¹⁸ Some young African Caribbean women are restricted to the health and social care sectors, following in the footsteps of the Windrush women. Historically, Caribbean women worked in significant numbers for the National Health Service (NHS). According to the McGregor-Smith Review,¹⁹ occupations requiring intermediate skills, such as nursing assistants, attract more individuals from an African background. Mitton & Aspinall¹² confirm that health and social care are the main occupations of Zimbabweans. However, significant numbers of African women follow their career trajectory independently to fulfil their own economic needs, unlike in the 1950s when they came primarily to join their husbands. Professional women, including nurses, doctors and lawyers from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Ghana, now engage in international migration to take advantage of the better pay packages in Britain, sometimes leaving their spouses at home to care for children.²⁰

It is well established that in neoliberal globalization, education is the key to upward social mobility and economic well-being.²¹ Furthermore, financial viability is often determined by occupational status and can be seen as one of the most salient factors in illuminating inequalities in the labor market.²² However, research surmises that the educational levels of Black women do not always correspond to their occupational profile in the labor market. According to the McGregor Smith Review, over 40% of all Black African employees with A-level and graduate-level qualifications are overqualified for their current jobs. Mitton & Aspinall¹² also identify that though levels of unemployment were relatively low for Nigerian females, they face obstacles in translating educational achievement into managerial and professional occupations. They also explain that fewer Black Africans in general than White British workers with degrees had a job matching their qualifications at that level. Their data suggest that Nigerian migrants were overeducated for their respective occupations. A disturbing trend in the Mitton & Aspinal¹² study is that "whilst a good proportion of the second generation were accessing professional and managerial occupations, the data suggested polarisation, with many working in low-paying sectors or over-qualified for the jobs they were in" (p.2). Therefore, it can be postulated that if Blacks, especially non-British born, are working in industries below their educational levels, then their income does not reflect their educational status, and there is a pay gap compared to their White counterparts on this basis alone. Further, data from the Office for National Statistics reveals that "UK born employees in the Black African, Caribbean or Black British group estimated to earn 7.7% less than their UK-born White British counterparts" (p. 15). Significantly, in higher professions such as academia, the pay gap was even more substantial and there are both ethnic and gender penalties. In response to the BBC's Freedom of Information (FOI), Black and Arab academics received an average pay difference of 26% compared with their fellow White colleagues. The penalties for females were increased, taking the disparities in gender pay into account.²³ The Runnymede Trust Report, Aiming Higher, outlined the complicated interrelationship of race in the academy, from inequalities in pay and promotion to the challenges of implementing diversity policies as standard practice. In addition, their high levels of self-employment may have been the outcome of facing racial discrimination in the primary labor market.

Unfortunately, there is no Affirmative Action in the United Kingdom like one finds in the US. The lack of Affirmative Action as a policy strategy or rigor in providing equal opportunities in the labor market has possibly resulted in some degree of inertia for many leading companies and black women fighting for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white male counterparts. As we have already discussed, it is often difficult to provide concrete analyses of the attainment for Black women solely as they are sometimes aggregated within minority ethnic groups as a whole and not gender-specific. The earlier Parker Review of 2017 recognized that the ethnocultural make-up of board membership in many companies needed to change from being all White by 2021. The lack of minorities, including Black females at senior levels, prompted an updated Parker Review by Sir John Parker and his colleagues.²⁴ Of the 100 FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) 94 companies have met the ambitious 2021 target of representation of at least one member from a minority ethnic background on their boards. Of the 1,056 director positions, 164 (16%) are held by people from a minority ethnic background. Interestingly, a majority of these board positions are as non-executive directors. There are 12 other executive directors, only three chairs and six CEOs from a minority ethnic background in the FTSE 100. It is not clear how many of these are Black women but it seems as if they are still unable to break through the so-called 'glass ceiling' of major companies.

In sum, for many neoliberal black women and their white progressive allies the main obstacles to their professional success is the fact that Britain is still a racialized, gendered, and class-based society. If you are a female from a poor or working-class and Black background, there are insurmountable external disadvantages. Just the same, Black middle-class females who are relatively in a better position in the labor market than their working-class counterparts still face 'ethnic penalties' compared to their White middle-class peers. In other words, they are penalized for their racial and gendered identity. Yet despite these obstacles, the aim of black women and progressive whites has been to push for further integration of the education sector and the labor market for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites. In doing so, however, the racial categories of race and gender identity, along with their structurally determined practical consciousnesses, are retained and reified as both a comprador bourgeoisie and commodity market for capital accumulation without serving as a challenge to the neoliberal economic social structure.

In other words, the social agency of working educated black British women as suggested throughout this article, has been for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution within the society. However, as black British women push for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution in British society, given the inequalities highlighted, their identities as black women are reified as both a commodity and market, which is served (by providing hair products, clothing, and other accoutrements of the culture) by the educated and entrepreneurially driven amongst them as a comprador bourgeoisie working for capital accumulation for themselves and the upper-class of owners and high-level executives who provide funding in the form of loans, access, etc., to the larger society thereby accumulating capital through both their identities and service, as middle managers and administrators, in the postindustrial economy of the United Kingdom. That is to say, their identities as Black women are reified and commodified as a market for generating capital for the larger society, which utilizes the more embourgeoised and entrepreneurially successful amongst them to cater to the service needs of the market, which, under the control of the structurally differentiated black underclass, produce the contents and commodities of consumption. Hence, black British women in their struggle for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution in the United Kingdom become a simulacra of their oppressors, and their agency, as hybrids (black feminine men), is not counter-hegemonic; instead, it is integrative, oppressive, exploitative, and a threat to all life on earth as they recursively organize and reproduce the very practical consciousness, agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, which threatens the limit to growth logic of the earth and its pending climate change problematic.

Put differently, the purposive-rationality of black women, interpellated and embourgeoised, via education and the labor and consumer markets, within the Protestant capitalist social structure is for the liberal clarion call for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution, with white men and women within a fascist and vacuous call for identity politics and diversified consumerism for capital accumulation not to overthrow or offer a counter hegemonic alternative systemicity to a process, capital accumulation, domination, and exploitation which threatens all life on earth via neoliberal market forces, pollution, global warming, overconsumption, etc. Third wave feminism is characterized by this (negative) dialectical struggle as feminine men seek integration in neoliberal globalization by recursively organizing and reproducing the ideas and ideals of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution, while simultaneously convicting the white male power elites for not recognizing their ideals in the praxis of their feminine counterparts who desire to behave like them. Black women in this process are not an exception; instead, they are the norm.

None.

There are no conflicting interests declared by the authors.

None.

1. Mocombe PC. Feminine Patriarchy. Sociology International Journal. 2021;6 (3):78–82.
2. Mocombe PC, Tomlin C, Showunmi V. Jesus and the Street: The Loci of Causality for the Intra-Racial Gender Academic Achievement Gap in Black. 2016.
3. Ivy J. Choosing Futures: Influence of Ethnic Origin in University Choice. International Journal of Educational Management. 2010;24(5):391–403.
4. Noden P, Shiner M, T Modood. Black and Minority Ethnic Access to Higher         Education A Reassessment Philip. London: London School of Economics and Political Science. 2014.
5. Jones Laura. Women’s Progression in the Workplace Global. Institute for Women’s Leadership, Kings College London. London: Government Equality Office. 2020.
6. Nesbit A, Lynch M. African Children in Britain. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 1992;67:1402–1405.
7. Demie F, Tong R, Taplin A, et al. The Achievement of African Heritage. 2006.
8. Goos M, Manning M. Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work. The Review of Economics and Statistics. 2007;89(1):118–133.
9. Kamasak R, Mustafa F, Ozbilgin M, et al. Race Discrimination at Work in the United Kingdom. Race Discrimination and the Management of Ethnic Diversity at Work:European Countries Perspectives. 2019.
10. Brescoll V. Leading with their Hearts? How Gender Stereotypes of Emotion Lead to Biased Evaluations of Female Leaders. The Leadership Quarterly. 2016;27:415–428.
11. Cheung, Sin Yi. Ethno-religious Minorities and Labour Market Integration: Generational Advancement or Decline? Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2014;37(1):140–160.
12. Mitton L, Aspinall .Black Africans in the UK: Integration or Segregation. UPTAP Research Findings. 2011.
13. Buckner L, Yeandle S, Botcherby S. Moving on Up? Ethnic Minority. Women and Work. 2007.
14. Reynolds T. Black Mothering, Paid Work and Identity Tracey. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2001;24(6):1046–1064.
15. Showunmi V. Why British Black Women Have Difficulty Finding Employment. London: The Edwin Mellen Press. 2012.
16. Dodgson E. Motherland: West Indian Women to Britain in 1950s. London: Heinemann Educational Books. 1986.
17. Bryan B, Dadzie, Scafe S. Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain. London: Virago; 1985.
18. Beck V, Fuller A, Unwin L. Safety in Stereotypes? The Impact of Gender and ‘race’ on Young People’s Perceptions of their Post-compulsory Education and Labour Market Opportunities. British Educational Research Journal. 2006;32(5):667–686.
19. Parker John. The Parker Review Committee. A Report into the Ethnic Diversity of UKBoards. 2017.
20. Forson C. Social Embeddedness, “Choices" and Constraints in Small Business Startup: Black Women in Business. PhD Thesis: Queen Mary University of London; 2007.
21. Bukodi Erzsébet, Goldthorpe, John H. SocialMobility and Education in Britain: Research, Politics and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018.
22. Heath A, Cheung S. Ethnic Penalties in the Labour Market: Employers and Discrimination, Research report No 341. London: Department of Work and Pensions. 2014.
23. Croxford R. Ethnic Minority Academics Earn Less than White Colleagues. The BBC [Online]. 2020.
24. Parker John. Improving the Ethnic Diversity of UK Boards. Updated Report          from the Parker Review. 2022.