Headscarf and job recruitment—lifting the veil of labour market discrimination

Abstract

This paper investigates effects of appearance and religious practice of job applicants on the hiring decision. We asked participants in our laboratory experiment to select fictitious candidates for an interview from a pool of CVs with comparable characteristics but different photos. Some photos were of the same Turkish women with and without a headscarf. We demonstrate the effects of appearance, ethnicity, and veiling simultaneously and propose underlying mechanisms. We find robust effects of appearance but heterogeneous effects of headscarf on callback rates based on types of occupations and recruiters' characteristics. However, positive characteristics mitigate discrimination against headscarf and even reverse it. JEL Classification: J15, J71, C91

Curbing Discriminating Human Resource Practices—A Microfounded Perspective

“…Thus, as stressed by the contact hypothesis (Allport 1954;Pettigrew and Tropp 2006) fostering the change of stereotypes and prejudices through allowing for positive experiences constitutes the first way to mitigate their negative impact. This strategy also is the only possibility to mitigate discrimination resulting from stereotypes related to appearance (e.g., Jawahar and Mattsson 2005;Johnson et al 2010;Kaufmann et al 2016;Leckcivilize and Straub 2018), to fitting processes, e.g., the positive effects of the fit of applicants or ratees to job-related, sex/gender or age stereotypes (e.g., Leung and Koppman 2018;Perry et al 1996;Post et al 2009;Rice and Barth 2017), to a candidate's fit with predefined masculinity norms (Flynn et al 2015) as well as to the preference for candidates with previous gender-typical jobs (Hareli et al 2008).…”

Where Difference Begins

“…Social sciences make it clear that we live in a world in which our chances of being and becoming are largely structured by how other people see us. For example, it is well documented that women wearing headscarves experience discrimination in hiring processes (Leckcivilize and Straub 2018), obese applicants receive fewer call-backs for job interviews (Rooth 2010), and people perceived as more attractive and beautiful tend to earn more (Parrett 2015;Doorley and Sierminska 2015). Science also relies on appearance: migration scholarship, for example, frequently addresses people of colour as 'visibly non-white' minorities (Song 2020), using visible appearance as a marker of racial identity.…”

Employability and Labor Income of Immigrants in the US: A Special Focus on the Roles of Language and Home Country Income Level

“…However, immigrants from countries that speak Arabic, French, Chinese, and multiple regional languages earn less than immigrants from countries that speak only national languages. Since a job applicant's name signals their ethnicity, religion, and race (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004;Leckcivilize & Straub, 2018), these immigrants may face taste-based discrimination. In this respect, immigrant-specific active labor market policies (ALMPs) may be a response to labor market discrimination.…”