Abstract
This study examined the extent to which graduating university students perceived the existence of ethnic minority and gender disadvantage in the UK graduate labour market. The study sought to test two conflicting hypotheses. In the present context, the Double Jeopardy Hypothesis, which has additive and multiplicative variants, posits that females from ethnic minority backgrounds will perceive themselves as doubly disadvantaged when job-seeking, while the Ethnic Prominence Hypothesis proposes that ethnic minority women consider their ethnicity salient in vocational disadvantage. Eight hundred graduating or recently graduated participants of Black, White, Indian and Pakistani / Bangladeshi ethnic origin, and from three socio-economic backgrounds, were asked to rate how difficult they perceived it to be currently in the UK, for both a suitably qualified male job-seeker and a suitably qualified female job-seeker from their own ethnic background, to obtain each of ten graduate jobs. Among other things, results showed that, apart from Black females, both males and females perceived females as experiencing greater job acquisition difficulty than males. Black and Pakistani / Bangladeshi participants, but not Indian participants, perceived significantly greater difficulties than White participants. It is concluded that in general the data lends support to the additive version of the Double Jeopardy Hypothesis. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for ethnic minority job-seeking behaviour and employment outcomes.