Unveiled or unemployed? – that’s the dilemma for many Muslim women in the German public employment sector. Since the case of Fereshta Ludin, who was denied a teaching position at a public school in the state of Baden-Württemberg due to her wearing a headscarf in 1998, institutional action on Islamic garb has been highly contested. Despite the 2015 decision by the German Federal Constitutional Court that declared general headscarf bans for public school teachers to be unconstitutional, existing restrictions on religious garb have only slowly been amended. This research project examines SDG implementation in Baden-Württemberg three years after the decisive ruling.

Key stakeholders in the examined practice on gender equality and justice in the German labor market include employees, employers (i.e. the state), society, and politics. Employees, and hereby Muslim women wearing a headscarf and aspiring to work in the public employment sector, continue to face significant challenges to access and to succeed in the German labor market. As our interviews show, the 2015 decision by the German Federal Constitutional Court was welcomed, but more needs to be done to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as it concerns SDG 5, 8, 19, and 16.