The Silent Discrimination against Headscarved Professionals in the Turkish Labor Market: The Case of Women in the Banking Sector

Hatice Karahan and Nigar Tugsuz
Additional contact information
Hatice Karahan: Department of Economics and Finance, Istanbul Medipol University, Istanbul 34810, Turkey
Nigar Tugsuz: Department of Sociology, Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Istanbul 34662, Turkey

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 20, 1-15

Abstract: This study addresses the widespread discriminatory policies against headscarved professionals in the Turkish job market, by focusing on the female-intensive banking sector. Although the number of professionals wearing headscarves has increased since 2013 with the removal of the ban on headscarves for workers in the public sector, we argue that significant ideological discriminatory practices and bias against these women still exist. To expose this hidden reality and uncover its dynamics, we undertook exploratory in-depth interviews with 30 professionals from the Turkish banking sector, including both men and women. Our findings verify a severe underrepresentation of headscarved professionals in the commercial banking sector. Whereas, after 2013, state-owned banks began, to some extent, to recruit women wearing the headscarf, private commercial banks have not amended their exclusionist policy towards headscarved white-collar employees. Research findings confirm that in the Turkish banking sector, policies regarding the headscarf are still shaped by ideological corporate values. This study suggests that the appointment and promotion of female professionals in the Turkish banking sector are blocked by long-established stereotypes and prejudices, which stand in the way of inclusive practices supporting social equity, as well as diversity and the equality of women in the workplace.

Keywords: banking sector; women; labor market; discrimination; social equity; headscarf (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/20/11324/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/20/11324/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:20:p:11324-:d:655533

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().