20 September 2016

Muslim women face German job barriers - discrimination study

An experiment in Germany has found evidence of job discrimination against women with Turkish names - and even more if they wear an Islamic headscarf.

A university researcher sent 1,500 identical CVs to German firms - except that some bore the name Meryem Ozturk and others the name Sandra Bauer.

In 18.8% of cases Sandra Bauer was invited for interview, whereas the figure for Meryem was just 13.5%.

When the photo of Meryem showed her in a headscarf only 4.2% invited her.

The study was published by the Institute for the Study of Labour, in Bonn. The researcher was Doris Weichselbaumer from the University of Linz, in Austria.

The findings are especially significant in light of Germany's current efforts to integrate record numbers of Muslim migrants, many of them refugees from the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. [BBC] Read more