Earlier this year the European Union’s highest court ruled that employers could prohibit employees from wearing visible religious symbols at work, as long as they banned all religious wear, and did not single out a particular religion. However, the case centered on two Muslim women who had been fired for refusing to remove their headscarves while on the job, and the ruling was seized on by politicians in Germany, France, and the Netherlands as a “headscarf ban.” It’s the latest event in Europe’s long-simmering tensions over the various forms of Muslim veiling.
Study: Employers Are Less Likely to Hire a Woman Who Wears a Headscarf
Whether Muslim women can wear a headscarf to work is a hotly contested issue in some parts of Europe. A new study sheds light on some of the biases that women who choose to veil may face on the job market. The researcher sent out job applications to firms in Germany for three fictitious female candidates with identical qualifications. They differed only with respect to their name and the photograph that was attached to the résumé. (In Germany, job seekers typically do attach their picture to their résumé.) While all of the photos showed the same woman, one applicant had a German name, “Sandra Bauer,” and two applicants had a Turkish name, “Meryem Öztürk.” One of the Meryems was shown with a headscarf. When “Meryem Öztürk” wore a headscarf, she had to send 4.5 as many applications as “Sandra Bauer” to receive the same number of callbacks for interviews. Discrimination was even higher in the occupation with the highest status and the highest qualifications required, even though firms often struggle to fill those vacancies.