Hijabophobia  Hijabophobia is a type of religious and cultural discrimination against Muslim women who wear the hijab. The discrimination has had manifestations in public, working and educational places. "Hijabophobia" is a term referring to discrimination against women wearing Islamic veils, including the hijab, chador, niqāb and burqa. It is considered a gender-specific type of Islamophobia, or simply "hostility towards the hijab". The term is applied to discourse based in colonial representations of Muslim women as victims oppressed by misogynistic cultures, in academic circles. According to "The Gazette", hijabophobia began as a French national phenomenon, citing the 1989 headscarf affair (). In France, according to Ayhan Kaya, Islamophobia is mixed with hijabophobia. In a 2012 paper, Hamzeh posits that 'hijabophobia' encapsulates the sexist aspects of Islamophobia, where Muslim women bear the brunt of anti-Muslim attacks. Political scientist Vincent Geisser argues that hijabophobia became more widespread after the September 11 attacks, as evidenced by the number of laws regulating and restricting hijab in public places and governmental offices. A study found that Muslim girls in London perceived discrimination when wearing hijab outside their immediate communities, and felt social pressure to not wear hijab. In addition, according to the ACLU, 69% of women who wore hijab reported at least one incident of discrimination compared to 29% of women who did not wear hijab. A ruling by European Union's top law court, European Court of Justice, on 14 March 2017 allowed the employers "to ban staff from wearing visible religious symbols" such as the hijab. The decision was criticized for disguising what Muslims described as "a direct attack on women wearing hijabs at work". As a result, by 2017, two women from France and Belgium were dismissed from work since they refused to remove their hijabs. Samira Achbita, a woman from Belgium, was dismissed from working in her company (G4S) as a result of the court ruling. OpenDemocracy argued that the ruling was ostensibly based on the employer's wish "to portray a position of neutrality", and hence the court ruling was a normalization of hijabophobia. Al Jazeera described the ruling as setting precedent for a "de facto prevention" of employment for Muslim women wearing the hijab. There are instances where Muslim dress have been banned in public spaces. The Muslim burqa was banned by local laws in Spain in 2010, though these laws began to be overturned by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2013.