“Banning the veil at university risks excluding certain women from higher education” | EUROtoday

Che previous few months have seen the controversy on non secular symbols resurface within the French public house. On January 22, as a part of its parliamentary area of interest, the Republican Right group should defend within the National Assembly a invoice geared toward “prohibit the veiling of minors in public spaces”.

In 2025, a number of political leaders had already put proposals on the agenda on the ” veil “ [le foulard couvrant les cheveux, ou hijab] in search of to tighten the framework for its visibility in a context of political recomposition within the run-up to the presidential elections. However, this isn’t a easy repetition: these proposals now lengthen to areas hitherto spared, notably the college, and have a extra normal scope than within the earlier sequences.

In this renewal of the controversy, one argument stays central and stands out as apparent: if a girl wears the veil, it’s as a result of she is pressured to take action. However, once we rigorously study the empirical work produced by the social sciences, the image seems extra advanced, and above all out of step with the diagnoses used to justify these measures.

The surveys carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies and the National Institute of Demographic Studies – notably “Trajectories and Origins” (2008-2009; 2019-2020) – make it potential to watch non secular practices and social trajectories on a big scale. It seems that using the veil doesn’t mechanically indicate male constraint; a number of research present, quite the opposite, that this alternative can go towards household expectations, and even towards the preferences of the partner or mother and father.

Certainly, the info signifies that veiled ladies have on common extra kids, fewer years of schooling and decrease participation in employment. But the path of causality shouldn’t be self-evident. Jacquet and Montpetit’s econometric evaluation exhibits that the variations can’t be interpreted as the easy product of household or marital constraints. The essential determinant of sporting the veil is particular person religiosity, whereas employment gaps are largely defined by discrimination within the labor market, as additionally confirmed by subject experiments carried out by different economists.

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