More research on low representation of Muslims in senior management roles

The Guardian publishes findings from a new report by Demos, Rising to the Top, which highlights some of the barriers faced by Muslims in aspiring to a Russell Group university education and to senior management roles in the labour market.

The report notes that British Muslims show the lowest level of representation among all religious groups in senior management positions: “Only 16% of British Muslims are in senior roles, fewer people than any other religious group, and compared with a UK average of 30% of people in such roles.”

The report also notes the high rate of economic inactivity among British Muslim males and particularly females.

The report includes recommendations, such as anonymised CVs, to improve the recruitment of Muslims to senior positions. It also observes some of the structural barriers to career progression for Muslims noting the need for large organisations to adopt “contextual recruitment” practices in order to get a “better understanding of a candidate’s life experience and background”.

The Demos report is but another contribution to a long list of labour market studies and policy recommendations about the barriers faced by British Muslims in higher education and employment. While empirical evidence and qualitative analyses of the very specific problems faced by Muslims in education and employment have been voluminous in the last decade, policy initiatives to address the problems identified have been almost non-existent.

In 2001, the Cabinet Office report on Ethnic Minorities in the UK Labour Market identified the “ethnic penalty” faced by minorities and its impact. British Muslims were found to experience the highest rates of unemployment with British Muslim female unemployment far eclipsing that of their white and ethnic minority counterparts. The findings were later reinforced by the National Equality Panel report in 2010 which highlighted that “Muslims are paid 13-21% less than their White Christian counterparts of equal qualification” and “The white population gets the best returns in terms of wages for a given level of qualifications – all minority groups suffer some form of ‘penalty’…Muslim ethnic groups suffer the largest ‘ethnic penalty’.”

In 2012, a report by the APPG on Race and Community investigating ethnic minority female unemployment found that “unemployment rates of Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage women have remained consistently higher than those of white women since the early 1980s.” The report found that BME women faced hurdles at “all levels” of recruitment.

More recently, Dr Nabil Khattab of Bristol University studying Labour Force Surveys found that British Muslims faced the worst levels of job discrimination of all groups. Dr Khattab found that British Muslims are “76 per cent less likely to have a job of any kind compared to white, male British Christians of the same age and with the same qualifications. And Muslim women were up to 65 per cent less likely to be employed than white Christian counterparts.”

The Demos report merely illustrates that the problems faced by British Muslims in education and the labour market have been the subject of numerous studies but has generated little by way of policy attention. Our Muslim manifesto for the 2015 general election highlighted some of these earlier studies and the need for more targeted interventions by Government to address the ongoing impact of discrimination in education and employment on Muslim life chances.

The Conservative manifesto made no explicit references at all to removing barriers to BME recruitment stating only that the party would “make the labour market more inclusive”. The Liberal Democrat manifesto did reflect one recommendation included in the Demos report, that of anonymised CVs, stating the party would “Move to ‘name blank’ recruitment wherever possible in the public sector”.

David Cameron in his speech in Birmingham earlier this summer spoke of the appointment of Louise Casey to head up a commission tasked with investigating, how to “boost employment outcomes” for Muslims as part of a wider review of supporting the social and economic integration of British Muslims.

With an abundance of evidence on the systemic problems faced by British Muslims, it is not an absence of information that has been the issue. It is the absence of any political will to do something about it and while the evidence base continues to portray a minority in need of policy prescriptions to reverse endemic discrimination, politicians have paid little heed.