Gender-Neutral Salon Pricing Is Gaining Ground

In 2016, 84% of salons in the UK used gendered pricing. Men’s cut, women’s cut. Two categories, two price points. By 2025, that number dropped to 57%. Forty-two percent of salons now price by service type, hair length, or complexity rather than gender.

That shift didn’t happen because of a single campaign or a viral moment. It happened because the old system stopped making sense for a growing number of salon owners and their clients. I’ve been watching this play out in my classroom and at my chair in Brooklyn, and the pattern is clear enough to map.

Why Gendered Pricing Is Losing Ground

The logic behind “men’s cut / women’s cut” was always a proxy. Men’s cuts were assumed shorter, simpler, faster. Women’s cuts were assumed longer, more layered, more time-consuming. The price difference reflected that assumption.

The problem: assumptions stopped matching reality. A man with shoulder-length hair getting a layered cut takes the same time and skill as a woman with the same request. A woman with a pixie cut takes less product, less time, and less effort than a man with a textured crop that requires point-cutting and razor work. When you charge by gender, you’re either overcharging one client or undercharging another.

A California survey found that 40% of hair salons charged women $5 more than men for a standard haircut. Nationally, women pay an average of $44 for a haircut compared to $28 for men, according to payment systems data. That gap holds even when the service is equivalent in time and complexity.

Average haircut price by gender (US)

Three states have already acted on this. California, New York, and Massachusetts now prohibit gender-based price discrimination for equivalent services. More states introduced similar bills in 2024, including Kentucky, Missouri, and South Carolina. Whether or not legislation reaches your state, the direction is set.

What’s Replacing It: Time, Length, Complexity

Salons that drop gendered pricing don’t just remove the labels. They rebuild the menu around what actually drives cost: time in the chair, length of hair, and technique required.

The three models I see most often:

Length-based pricing. Short, medium, long. Simple for clients to understand, easy to display on a booking page. A short haircut is a short haircut regardless of who sits down. This is the most common entry point for salons making the switch.

Time-based pricing. 30-minute cut, 60-minute cut. More granular, harder for new clients to self-select when booking online. Works best for salons that do consultations before confirming price. Some stylists find this model captures add-on time they used to absorb.

Complexity-based pricing. Scissor cut, clipper cut, layered cut, textured cut. Names describe the technique, not the client. This approach lets you price services by what they actually cost to deliver rather than by category.

Each model solves the same problem differently. The common thread: the price reflects the work, not the person.

What Students Are Telling Me

I started hearing the word “inclusive” in student questions around 2023. Not in an abstract way. Students were asking practical questions: “How do I write a service menu that doesn’t assume gender?” and “What do I do when a non-binary client asks for a men’s cut price?”

By this semester, roughly a third of my students have already encountered gender-neutral menus during their externships. They’re not surprised by the concept. They expect it. The generation entering the workforce now sees gendered pricing the way my generation saw smoking sections in restaurants. Technically still legal in some places, but clearly on the way out.

That classroom signal matters. The students who graduate this year will set the norms for the next decade of salon culture. If they build their businesses around length-based or complexity-based pricing from day one, the gendered model loses its default status faster than any legislation could achieve.

The Resistance Is Real

I’m not going to pretend this is a clean, frictionless transition. The NHBF survey found that 67% of salons with gendered pricing are not considering a switch. Half of those cited customer resistance or confusion as the primary obstacle. Twenty-seven percent said adjusting their existing price structure was the barrier. Eighteen percent worried about revenue loss.

Those concerns aren’t irrational. A salon that has charged $35 for a men’s cut and $55 for a women’s cut for fifteen years can’t just rename the categories without clients noticing the math changed. If you set one “short cut” price at $45, some men see a $10 increase while some women see a $10 decrease. The net might be neutral, but the conversations aren’t.

The salons I’ve seen handle this well do two things. First, they frame the change around what the client gets: “We now price by the service, not the person.” Second, they build a tiered structure that gives clients clear options. Short/medium/long. Quick/standard/extended. When clients can see exactly what determines the price, the transition sticks.

Where This Goes

I won’t predict a timeline. The UK is further along than the US. Urban salons are further along than rural ones. New salons adopt faster than established ones because they have no legacy menu to dismantle.

What I can say: the inputs driving this shift are all accelerating. Legal pressure is expanding. New stylists expect it. Clients under 35 prefer it (60% in a Boulevard survey favored gender-neutral pricing). Booking software increasingly supports length-based and time-based categories. The infrastructure is catching up to the idea.

I’m adjusting my curriculum accordingly. I now teach service menu design using length-based categories as the default example. Students still learn the traditional structure because they’ll encounter it. But the first menu they build in class uses short/medium/long, not men’s/women’s.

The data says this shift is structural. Whether you move now or later is a business decision. But the direction is only going one way.