Within the female-oriented walls of a hair salon, women receive treatment with kindness, respect and a sense of belonging that they seldom find elsewhere. The rapport and understanding between stylist and client go further than just beautification. Nowhere is this more true than across Africa, where hair salons become places for socially disadvantaged women to regain their quality of life. Increasingly, these spaces are also becoming hubs for new initiatives around mental and sexual health, reflecting a growing emphasis on female empowerment in African hair salons.

Hair Salons as Mental Health Care

Whether it is their subordinated social, political and economic status, or the threats of domestic violence, sexual assault and harmful traditional practices that still permeate many African cultures, women bear a heavy burden in African society. To add to this, Women make up 80% of the 12.7 million refugees and asylum seekers forcibly displaced from West and Central Africa every year.

The lack of safe institutional spaces and the scarcity of mental health professionals further exacerbate this multifaceted gender oppression. These subordinated women are often unable to seek support in wider, male-dominated society. As a result, many remain both vulnerable and powerless in society.

Recognizing the strong tendency for women to casually open up to their hairdresser, humanitarian organizations have begun training stylists in delivering mental health support – particularly for women who may use the salon as their first port of call in a crisis.

Learning New Skills

Hairstylists universally hold a unique caregiving position in society that cannot be easily replicated. In accordance, the Heal by Hair program, active across Togo, aims to equip these workers with skills in active listening, recognizing emotional distress and delivering psychological first aid. Delivering training sessions across three days and receiving nearly 250 applications, the program successfully trained stylists to become the first hairdresser mental health ambassadors on the African Continent. The initiative allows both for stylists to conduct risk assessments and refer clients to professional services and for these women to take control of their own mental health through access to resources.

Perhaps it is the connection that forms through sharing eye contact in the mirror, the comfort of talking to someone outside their inner circle, or the hours of idle time to be filled with conversation – but something about hair salons makes people want to talk. By reshaping the vulnerable conversations that naturally occur in African hair salons into therapeutic and healing dialogues, this augmentation of female empowerment offers an outlet and camaraderie which ultimately reshape the lives of young women.

Hair Salons as Sexual Health Care

For many African women, seeking sexual health support at a clinic is difficult because of fears of being dismissal, stigma or exposure – not to mention challenges around cost and distance. As a result, they often have limited access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, leading to higher rates of unintended pregnancies, unsafe terminations and sexually transmitted infections (STIs)

This risk is avoidable. Acknowledging the accessibility and trustworthiness of African hair salons has helped shift the way of delivering SRH services. Their informal, familiar environments make salons ideal spaces for women to discuss and receive sexual health care safely and without judgement.

Across southern Africa, salons have started training stylists to deliver STI testing, hormonal and injectable contraceptives and HIV prevention medications – all from the salon floor.

Stylists also learn how to deliver education and counselling to young girls, offering them autonomy to make informed choices about their bodies. This sense of female empowerment in African hair salons can be carried through to real-world scenarios, and is often the key factor in improving their futures. In turn, such initatives prevent socioeconomic consequences of unsafe sexual practices, such as school dropout and generational poverty.

Safe Spaces

Salons become both literal and symbolic safe spaces, an everyday space which encompasses many of their needs. These initiatives have gained momentum across several African countries and even attracted attention from major publications such as Vogue and Elle, affirming that this focus on female empowerment in African hair salons is revolutionary in regard to women’s health. Amongst women who share similar stories and struggles, women forge chosen families rooted in empathy and mutual support, empowering them to find strength in one another to face an uncertain future.

– Emily Wooster

Emily is based in Birmingham, UK and focuses on Good News and Global Health for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons