Islam Times - Job Opportunities Biased against Muslims in Germany: Study

Islam Times - The job opportunities in Germany are biased against Muslim population, especially the Hijab wearing women, a research released on Tuesday showed.

The research carried out by the IZA institute says migrants and women with headscarves are particularly disfavored in job applications in this European country.

A Muslim migrant woman in Germany who wears a headscarf has to send almost five times as many job applications as a native German candidate with same qualifications to get an interview, the research shows.

Researchers of the IZA institute sent three fake applications to 1500 companies across Germany. The applicants had similar qualifications but their name and attached photo showed different ethnical background.

The first had a usual native German name while the second used a Turkish name but with a bare headed photo and the third application used the same non-German name with the photo of the same woman with headscarf.

The first applicant received 18.8 percent positive answers while the bareheaded non-native received 13.5 percent and the Hijab wearing applicant was received by only 4.2 percent of the companies despite similar skills.

“The results show that Turkish migrants (signaled by a Turkish name) are discriminated against at a significant level, in particular when their photograph shows them wearing a Muslim headscarf,” IZA research fellow Prof. Doris Weichselbaumer wrote in the 27-page preliminary summary of the research paper.

“Everything else [being] equal, a female with a Turkish name who wears a headscarf has to send 4.5 times as many applications as an applicant with a German name and no headscarf to receive the same number of callbacks for interview,” she concluded.