Muslim women with a headscarf are rejected much more often than women without a migration background, but also more often than Muslim women who do not wear a headscarf. This is especially true for service positions with many customer contacts.
That appears from a comparative data analysis in the magazine European Sociological Review into discrimination on the labor market in three European countries, including the Netherlands. The outcome suggests that wearing Islamic clothing outweighs discrimination than just an Islamic or migration background.
The analysis is part of a many broader European research towards discrimination, the GEMM project. For that project, thousands of fictitious applications were sent out to European employers to gauge differences in response. From that data, academics from the universities of Oxford and Utrecht and from the German Institute for Migration Studies in Berlin (DeZIM) looked at a subset of 2,397 job applications from women with and without headscarves (hijab) to service positions in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. A distinction was also made between positions with a lot of personal customer contacts (receptionist, shop assistant, hairdresser) and those with much less (cook, administrative assistant, programmer).
Unveiled Muslim Women
The analysis shows ‘strong discrimination’ against Muslim women with headscarves in the Netherlands and Germany. In the Netherlands, almost 70 percent of non-Muslim women without a headscarf were called up for an interview or asked for more information, of Muslim women with a headscarf only 34.5 percent and 48.5 percent without a headscarf. Broken down by occupations with a lot of customer contact, the difference is even greater: 65 percent of women without a migration background were invited, 41.7 percent of unveiled Muslim women and only 17.6 percent of Muslim women with hijab. Similar percentages apply to Germany. In Spain the difference for veiled women was much less.
That the rejection of veiled Muslim women is strongest in positions with a lot of customer contact indicates that employers anticipate negative reactions from the public. The researchers suggest that employers see Muslim women without hijab more as ‘cultural’ or secular Muslims, with a vaguer relationship to religion. They refer to previous studies showing that European populations are predominantly negative towards public expressions of Islam, but not necessarily negative towards Muslims as a group.
The researchers are surprised at the “high level of discrimination” in the Netherlands, because the country has a tradition of tolerant accommodation of minorities. One explanation is the many years of emphasis on Dutch cultural values in the integration debate. This can lead to stigmatization and placing religious Muslims out of order.
The scientists themselves have a caveat to their findings. Based on their research, it is not possible to determine whether employers would have had the same reactions to men wearing Islamic garb or visible signs of other religions. According to one of the researchers, the Utrecht sociologist Valentia Di Stasio, the latter is not very likely. “Other GEMM research shows that applicants who did Christian volunteer work were not disadvantaged. It really only concerns Muslims, and especially the headscarf.”
Forbidden
The analysis was carried out for the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, because a photo with a job application is not uncommon in those countries. Purchased photos sent with and without photoshopped hijab were used for the experiment.
There are also relevant similarities and differences between the countries. The Netherlands and Germany have legal restrictions on the wearing of Islamic clothing, Spain does not. A quarter of Germans and Spaniards think that Islamic clothing should be banned in public in the Netherlands, this is lower (14.5%). The share of Muslims in the population is comparable in the Netherlands (7.1%) and Germany (6.1%). Spain (2.6%) has only seen increasing immigration from Islamic countries since the beginning of this century.
It is not the first study into discrimination in the Dutch labor market. An experiment by the Verwey-Jonker Institute last year showed that students with a migration background have greater difficulty finding an internship. Men with a migration background, in particular, were less often asked for an interview. Discrimination in the labor market was also identified in 2010 in a report of the Social and Cultural Planning Office Rather Mark than Mohammed.