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

Attakrit Leckcivilize () and Alexander Straub ()
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Attakrit Leckcivilize: University of Aberdeen
Alexander Straub: Leibniz Universität Hannover

IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2018, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-32

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Labour discrimination; Beauty; Ethnicity; Economics of religion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J15 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1186/s40172-018-0071-x

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