Does Militancy No Longer Mean Guns at High Noon?

This chapter examines the evolution of the “corporate woman” – a term from Business Week magazine – and the relationship between neoliberalism and Second Wave feminism at the dawn of the 1980s. Beginning with Network (1976), this chapter explores the different ways women were imagined as socially equal in the business world and society within popular culture and business literature. As the 1970s progressed, the radical demands of feminism soon shifted to equality of access, allowing the corporate world to be seen as “progressive” and forward-thinking in hiring women and people of color into previously all-white male spaces. On the other hand, Black Feminism continued to advocate for radical change toward capitalism and its patriarchal “DNA.”