Religious Behaviour, Labour Supply, and Social Conformity: Evidence from a Workplace Ban on Muslim Religious Veiling

Kevin Devereux, Blair Long and Margaret Samahita

No 202607, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: In 2019 Canada’s second-largest province introduced a selective ban on religious clothing in the public service as part of a broader e?ort to promote secularism in the public sphere. Using novel survey data we find evidence of spillovers onto labour force participation and religious expression among those outside the public service. We study the largest legally targeted group: Muslim women. Conducting a di?erence-in-di?erence analysis comparing Muslim women in Quebec to those in the rest of Canada, we find a relative reduction in the most liminal religious behaviour – wearing a veil in public – among both Canadian-born Muslim women and immigrants. We also find a relative increase in labour force participation among Canadian-born Muslim women, but not among immigrants. We corroborate the employment results using high quality administrative tax records, and document an anticipation e?ect: Muslim women sort into the targeted occupations in the year before implementation. The results are consistent with social norm signaling influencing private religious behaviour and labour market outcomes.

Keywords: Social norms; Religious behaviour; Labour supply; Discrimination; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 J15 J22 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2026-03
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