Religious bias fears fading

ONLY A small proportion of graduates from Northern Ireland believe they have suffered from religious or gender discrimination when applying for jobs.

The finding is revealed in the latest research paper from theCentre for Research on Higher Education, a joint centre of Ulster University and Queen's University, Belfast.

The study, part of a long-term investigation of the graduate labour market since the late 1970s, offers a snapshot of more than 2,000 graduates in the early 1990s who entered higher education in 1985.

Just under 5 per cent said they had experienced gender discrimination both in applying for work and for promotion. More than 80 per cent of these were women.

Around 10 per cent reported religious discrimination when they applied for work, falling to only 2 per cent among those who had applied for promotion.

But almost one in five Catholics believed they had been discriminated against on religious grounds when applying for work, compared with less than one in 20 Protestants.