Abstract Religious conservatism is often associated with patriarchal attitudes and deterioration of women’s rights. This conventional wisdom has motivated ubiquitous policies that limit public expressions of religion and emphasize secular values. This paper demonstrates that a policy change which undermines secularity ends up empowering women. The current article takes advantage of a unique divergence in political institutions that occurred in Turkey’s recent history to explore how revoking a headscarf ban affected employment outcomes of women in the public sector. In a difference-in-discontinuities setting, I exploit the before/after discontinuous policy variation and compare female employment within municipalities that have Islamist and secular mayors. I find that eliminating legal obstacles against observant Muslim women in the labor market improves female employment in Islamist municipalities. Yet, when women are not allowed to wear headscarves to work, Islamist mayors employ less women vis-a-vis secular mayors. Overall, findings point to unintended consequences of headscarf bans on pious women.

中文翻译：

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揭开头巾禁令的影响：来自土耳其市政工作的证据

摘要 宗教保守主义往往与重男轻女的态度和妇女权利的恶化有关。这种传统智慧推动了无处不在的政策，这些政策限制了宗教的公开表达并强调了世俗价值观。本文表明，破坏世俗性的政策变化最终会赋予妇女权力。本文利用土耳其近代历史上出现的独特的政治制度分歧来探讨取消头巾禁令如何影响公共部门妇女的就业结果。在不连续性差异设置中，我利用不连续政策变化前后的差异，并比较了拥有伊斯兰市长和世俗市长的城市中的女性就业情况。我发现在劳动力市场上消除针对穆斯林女性的法律障碍可以改善伊斯兰城市的女性就业。然而，当不允许女性戴头巾上班时，与世俗市长相比，伊斯兰主义市长雇用的女性更少。总体而言，调查结果表明头巾禁令对虔诚女性的意外后果。