For the last decade, more Muslim women than men are going into higher education. Armed with the professional gold dust of a degree, these women should be on the way towards a blossoming career.

However, a new report by the Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR) highlights that for Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim women like me, this glowing success vanishes as these women struggle to enter the labour market.

Tumbling down the rabbit-hole of unemployment they go, where a “complex interplay” of increasing discrimination, everyday Islamophobia, some “cultural conservatism” and the failure of mainstream services, “including employment support, benefit and welfare systems, subsidised childcare and mental health support” let these women down.

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Of course, none of this comes as any surprise. Two years since Louise Casey’s review on integration blamed regressive “cultural or religious values” in Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim communities for holding women back from integrating and working, it is depressing to see how little has been done since.

The disproportionate focus on the un-British “patriarchal culture” of Muslims in the Casey review served not as an attempt to resolve disengagement among these women, but as a political scarecrow to distract from the structural barriers that also affect these women, and indeed all women from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

The knee-jerk assumption that culture alone is what holds back Muslim women is dressed in the trappings of colonialism where “British” culture, whatever that may be, is more “civilised”. It is this very same civilised culture in which women in the UK have borne 86% of the austerity burden and BAME women especially have been disproportionately affected by cuts to benefits, tax credits and public services since 2010. One woman is killed every three days in the UK and women’s refuges have had their budgets slashed by almost a quarter in the last seven years. Forgive me, but my womanhood is not oppressed by my faith, but by the callousness of austerity Britain.

Where mainstream organisations have failed to build trust in local communities, the IPPR report also highlights how community-based projects such as Shantona, a women and family centre in Leeds, have stepped in to complete the vital task of engaging Asian Muslim women and equipping them with skills, notwithstanding dwindling access to funding and local authority grants. Oversubscribed and stretched for resources, how long must they run on sheer altruism and goodwill before mainstream organisations will step in?

But the challenge isn’t simply for Muslim women to get their foot through the door, because there are also many hurdles within the workplace. The obsession with the sartorial choices of Muslim women has found its way into the work-space. When politicians openly liken Muslim women wearing the niqab to letterboxes, this legitimises Islamophobia and “othering” that already disproportionately affect visibly Muslim women.

There is also the big elephant-in-the-room that is class. Findings from the Race Disparity Audit suggest that your life chances are significantly lower if you are from a minority background, despite the fact that the representation of ethnic minority individuals within the labour market boost the economy by about £24bn a year.

The compassion afforded to the plight of the white working class is painfully absent when discussing class issues in the context of the Muslim community, despite the fact that 46% of the Muslim population lives in 10% of most deprived local authority districts in the UK. As the first graduate in the family, my own ascent up the rickety ladder of social mobility has been challenging: financial instability from unpaid internships and low-paid jobs, years of couch-surfing and living out of a suitcase in order to save on extortionate rent, premature burn-out, and a crippling sense of impostor syndrome which Michelle Obama recently spoke about, has followed me in varying degrees from university to the workplace.

The aspiration and hunger to succeed was always there. However, the networks, professional role models, signposting and the confidence to navigate worlds so detached from my working-class, single-parent roots was not. It was only with an iron-clad support network of mental cheerleaders, personal and professional mentors of women from similar backgrounds, with a sprinkling of sheer stubbornness, that any semblance of success has come my way. Yet we continue to regurgitate the myth of British meritocracy, the fuzzy idea if you work hard you will succeed. Meritocracy is an unforgiving path for women like me living at the intersections, faced daily with the exhausting task of smashing a glass ceiling stubbornly reinforced with sexism, racism, classism and as of late, Islamophobia.

Theresa May promised “a country that works for everyone” when she became prime minister. But the Britain emerging from the turbulence of Brexit negotiations is fast tumbling into the faultlines of divisiveness and inequality. Until the interconnections between race, class, and gender are fully recognised when it comes to discussions surround Muslim women’s access to the labour market, unless mainstream organisations step into assist community projects, we risk losing a generation of women who could be not just an economic asset to this country, but a powerful social one as well.

• Aina Khan is a freelance journalist