When two finalists compete for the same role, one a Muslim woman and the other not, both presenting the same resume, the Muslim candidate often faces a noticeably lower probability of being hired. A pioneering cross-country study explored how faith and culture shape hiring in Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands. The findings reveal a measurable bias against Muslim women across all three countries, with Spain showing the strongest impact.
Researchers Mariña Fernández-Reino, Valentina Di Stasio, and Susanne Veit collected data that confirm a long-standing intuition: candidates who come from abroad frequently encounter more skepticism and tougher competition than native peers. The study, published in the European Sociological Review, offers a detailed, comparative view of labor discrimination against Muslim women and how this bias varies by national context.
The publication aligns with recent policy shifts in Spain. The government approved an immigration reform aimed at improving access to employment for people with migrant backgrounds. As a result, thousands of workers of foreign origin, including many Muslim women, may experience smoother entry into the regular labor market.
Earlier research often focused on specific groups such as veiled Muslim women or on individual countries. Germany, a nation with a long history of immigration, has shown that Turkish women faced lower employment rates than Germans of native descent. This new work connects those threads on an international scale, comparing whether wearing a headscarf or not changes outcomes and applying the analysis to three nations at once.
The study reports that 25 percent of non-Muslim women who applied for jobs in Spain secured positions, compared with 15.7 percent of Muslim women. That gap stands as the largest among the economies examined. The authors emphasize that there is little difference in hiring odds between Muslim women who wear headscarves and those who do not. They also note that religion is one of several factors contributing to what is called the compositional effect, a mix that can dampen or amplify overall bias in hiring.
Public exposure and discrimination
A striking takeaway is the link between public exposure and discrimination. The more often a role requires direct contact with clients, the fewer opportunities exist for Muslim women. In Spain, believers in Islam face noticeably fewer chances to access client-facing positions, to the point that their odds are markedly lower than those of Christians or adherents of other minority faiths.
The researchers describe Spain as showing high competition for jobs paired with an extended sense of unemployment. The same pattern appears in Germany and the Netherlands, where Muslim women, despite facing bias, still show relatively better odds than in Spain for landing work. Reported figures highlight the persistent gap: in Germany, Muslim women are more likely to secure employment than their Spanish counterparts; in the Netherlands, unemployment remains a challenge but is not as dramatic as in Spain.
An unexpected finding was that discrimination against Muslim women who wear veils in the Netherlands and Germany mirrors the bias seen among non-veiled Muslim women. This result surprised the researchers, given the Netherlands’ reputation for inclusive multicultural policies and relatively tolerant attitudes toward veiling. The outcome suggests that anti-Muslim discrimination in hiring can span different expressions of identity, not just visible symbols.