On a losing streak? Baldness as a disability – by Hannah Saunders

Image by Phimchanok Srisuriyamart from Pixabay

1. Introduction

At the end of January 2026, the Upper Tax Tribunal decided that severe baldness in women is a disability. I first wrote about the illogicality of equality law’s approach to baldness in 2020. Since then, there have been several judgments attempting – via different mechanisms and to different degrees – to recognise the social reality of baldness.  This blog aims to explore where we are, how we got here, and where the law might go next. 

2. Social and legal framework

Looking different in a society which prizes physical appearance can, for some, be very difficult socially, psychologically and professionally. Studies and surveys with the visible difference community regularly report high levels of psychosocial distress; awkward or intrusive reactions from others; discrimination at work and in the job market; linked assumptions about negative personality traits; and even hate crime.

Despite this evidence, historically equality law in the UK has provided no clear recourse for people treated badly at work because of baldness.  The Equality Act 2010 (‘EA 2010’) gives specific legal protection to nine characteristics – age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, race, religion/belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Physical appearance does not make the list – although it does in some other countries, including France. The lack of protection against physical appearance discrimination in the UK has forced claimants to find other ways to frame claims under equality law related to baldness.

3. Previous cases on baldness

The Scottish case of Campbell v Falkirk Council [2008] S/136261/07 was brought under the protected characteristic of disability. Mr Campbell was a schoolteacher in his 60s who was regularly called names about his hair loss by students. He sought to argue that his hair loss was a long-term physical impairment which had a significant adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. His claim failed because the Scottish Employment Tribunal held that baldness was not an impairment. It remarked that ‘if baldness was to be regarded as an impairment then perhaps a physical feature such as a big nose, big ears or being smaller than average height might of themselves be regarded as an impairment under the DDA’. In other words, the Tribunal held that baldness was a mere appearance trait and not (applying the test for impairment from the case of Rugamer v Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited [2001] IRLR 644 (EAT)) ‘something wrong with them physically’. 

Although Campbell proved uncontroversial at the time, the Tribunal’s reasoning had an important limitation: it did not distinguish between different types of hair loss, nor different demographics of claimant. Male pattern baldness is experienced by up to 50% of men aged over 50 and generally begins on top of the head.  Alopecia areata, on the other hand, is rarer than pattern baldness and can cause patchy or total hair loss of the head and body at any stage of life, but most often in younger people. These factors should have been considered in the decision on impairment. Although both types of hair loss can be distressing for those involved irrespective of age and sex, one might expect the external social barriers facing someone with hair loss which is uncharacteristic to be particularly great. This surely makes it easier to understand some instances of hair loss as a physical ‘wrong’ to satisfy the threshold of impairment.

Fast forward to May 2022 and the decision by the Employment Tribunal in the case of Finn v The British Bung Manufacturing Company Ltd and others (1803764/2021).  Brief facts of Finn are set out in my earlier blog but a key finding was that a colleague called the claimant ‘a bald cunt’. (It was also alleged that the word ‘old’ was used but the Tribunal did not accept this on the facts). After a further altercation two years later the Claimant was dismissed and appealed unsuccessfully. The Claimant brought a number of claims including wrongful and automatically unfair dismissal, detriment pursuant to protected disclosures, detriment for a health and safety reason, harassment (relating to both sex and age) and victimisation.

For the purpose of this blog, it is the findings on harassment related to sex and age which are important.  These stemmed from the argument in which the Claimant was called a ‘bald cunt’. The Tribunal found that baldness was not inherently related to age, so the age-related harassment claim failed. But they found that baldness is inherently related to sex, so the sex-related harassment claim succeeded.

The definition of harassment under s.26(1) of the EA 2010 can be paraphrased as: 

(a) engaging in unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, and 

(b) the conduct has the purpose or effect of— 

(i) violating the other person’s dignity, or

(ii) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the other person.

Conduct ‘related to’ a protected characteristic provides a generous threshold. Causation is not required but merely a ‘connection or association’ (EOC v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry [2007] ICR 1234, para 6) with the protected characteristic.  Treatment which is related to the protected characteristic by the form it takes (such as ‘banter’) can fall within the scope of the section, even if not so motivated (see Hartley v Foreign and Commonwealth Office Services [2016] 5 WLUK 652). Given this relaxed threshold, the Tribunal in Finn held that baldness may be ‘related to’ sex because:

…it is much more likely that a person on the receiving end of a remark such as that made by [the claimant’s colleague] would be male. [The claimant’s colleague] made the remark with a view to hurting the claimant by commenting on his appearance which is often found amongst men. (para 238)

So, the prevalence of male pattern baldness among men means that insults about baldness may constitute harassment related to sex.

In my previous post, I outlined some of the questions raised by the judgment in Finn. But note that although the claimant’s sex was taken into account, the Tribunal once again failed to distinguish adequately between different types of hair loss (e.g. pattern baldness vs alopecia areata). Their logic paved the way for uncertainties, illogicalities, and gaps in protection – protecting men with male pattern baldness but perhaps not women with the same condition (who might be expected to encounter more extreme social barriers due to the relative rarity of the condition among women). Or protecting men with baldness conforming to the typical presentation of male pattern baldness but perhaps not those suddenly losing clumps of hair all over for other reasons.

Despite this, the Tribunal’s logic in Finn was approved by the EAT. The EAT roundly rejected the appellant’s contention that, for a trait to be ‘related to’ sex it must be found solely within people of one sex – in this case, men. The fact that some women are bald did not prevent baldness being related to sex due to the prevalence of baldness among men. It commented:

…the context of a remark said to constitute harassment within the meaning of section 26(1) of the EqA encompasses the prevalence amongst persons having the relevant protected characteristic of the feature to which that remark alludes and the absence of any other factor or circumstances said to explain the remark (para 26).

4. Mark Glenn Ltd v HMRC

This brings us to the case of Mark Glenn Ltd v HMRC [2026] UKUT 00034. Perhaps unusually for a labour law blog, Glenn was a tax case. For present purposes, it hinged on whether a semi-permanent hair attachment system (known as the Kinsey system) should be nil-rated for VAT as a supply related to disability or chronic sickness. The First-Tier Tribunal decision received little press attention. Consistent with Campbell, it held that:

…we are not inclined to find that significant hair loss or baldness in women is
an impairment. In any event, if we had found that significant hair loss or
baldness in women is an impairment, we do not find that it has a long-term
and substantial adverse effect on the ability of women to carry out everyday
activities (para 65).

On appeal, the Upper Tribunal (Tax) (“UTT”) decided that the creation of hair attachments for women with severe hair loss was a supply related to disability or chronic sickness. In doing so, they held that women with severe baldness are disabled. But, aside from the obvious financial ramifications for wigmakers and consumers, their rationale may have implications in other contexts.

The UTT noted that the tax legislation offers no detailed definition of disability, but that HMRC guidance echoes the definition in the equality legislation. For completeness, the EA 2010 defines disability as a long-term ‘physical or mental impairment which has a substantial adverse effect on the ability of the person concerned to carry out normal day-to-day activities’. This definition has a singular focus on functional barriers – found in the effect of impairment on normal day-to-day activities – to the exclusion of social barriers which disable people with impairments. But – and this is where things get interesting – the UTT then noted that the ‘ultimate question’ is ‘whether the condition advanced is a disability in the ordinary sense of that word’ (para 97).

Expounding the ‘ordinary sense’ of the word ‘disability’, the UTT continued:

The assessment of the impact of disability should take full account of any real-world social context. To ignore the very real impacts a disfiguring condition might have on the everyday activity of someone seeking to go about the daily business of life, which will inevitably involve activity where one is visible to and required to interact with others, is to deny social reality (para 98).

In other words, it embraced – to some extent at least – a social model of disability, locating disability in the interaction between impairment and social – rather than purely functional – barriers.

One of HMRC’s submissions on this point went back to the case of Campbell, set out above. It argued that, if hair loss were a disability, other appearance traits might by extension be argued to be disabilities too. But the Tribunal rejected this argument. They asserted a need to assess the degree of impact in any given case without denying the possibility that conditions which affect physical appearance can be disabling in principle.  

The UTT was clear that sex – or more particularly gender – was critical to its decision on social context. They limited their decision to severe hair loss among women, because of three factors: 1) the ‘very deep impact of hair loss on women’, 2) the ‘cultural focus on women’s hair’, and 3) ‘the rarity of women in the community with visible hair loss or baldness’ (para 100). This third point is particularly striking because its logic is almost antithetical to that adopted in Finn, where the prevalence of pattern baldness among men was key to the finding of harassment related to sex.

5. How can we reconcile these decisions?

Perhaps unusually, although all three of the cases discussed above concern baldness, the issue was slightly different in each one. The interplay between them appears likely to be as follows:

• men with male pattern baldness who are harassed for being bald may be able to claim harassment related to sex;
• women with severe hair loss who are discriminated against as a result may be able to claim disability discrimination;
•  we don’t know whether men who experience forms of hair loss which are less ‘typical’ for their sex (and therefore less likely to be ‘related to’ sex) have any protection in law;
• while women with severe baldness may be entitled to have reasonable adjustments made (such as a uniform adjustment to allow a cap or a wig or the right to choose to wear neither), men in the same boat probably are not, as the duty to make reasonable adjustments only exists under the protected characteristic of disability, not sex.

Although this overall direction of travel – towards recognising the disabling potential of social barriers in respect of impairments of appearance – is important, it does little to provide clarity or fairness for the time being. Potential claimants and their advisers will need to tread carefully.

6. Will Glenn apply outside the tax sphere?

One of the obvious questions flowing from Glenn is how far this decision will extend.  Decisions of the UTT are not binding on Employment Tribunals but have persuasive value. The UTT seemed keen to avoid accusations of opening the floodgates; they stressed that ‘our decision is confined to the facts of this case and to women who experience baldness in the form of severe and patchy hair loss’ (para 109). In addition, in distinguishing Campbell, they noted that the provisions of the Disability  Discrimination Act 1995 (now mirrored in salient respects in the EA 2010) were more ‘prescriptive’ (para 99) than the provisions under consideration by the UTT.

This could be read as a half-hearted attempt to distinguish the tax treatment of hair attachments from claims under equality legislation; in other words, wanting to keep the cost of wigs down for the women who want to wear them, without expanding the right to challenge unequal treatment because of baldness. This opportunity to retreat might be seized by Employment Tribunals in future cases, but doing so may not be straightforward; cases such as Goodwin v The Patent Office [1999] IRLR 4 (EAT) have stressed the need for a purposive interpretation to the definition of disability. It is arguable that Parliament’s purpose has been underestimated for years;  section 3(1), Schedule 1 of the Equality Act 2010 provides that ‘an impairment which consists of a severe disfigurement shall be treated as having a substantial adverse effect on the ability of the person concerned to carry out normal day-to-day activities’. Few cases have been heard under this provision since its introduction in 1995, and none relating to baldness of which I am aware. But it is hard to read this as anything other than a recognition of the social barriers facing people with impairments which severely impact the way they look. The wording of ‘severe disfigurement’ is clunky and far from perfect  – but its underlying purpose is hard to deny.

7. Can Glenn be applied to other aspects of appearance?

One of the arguments put forward by counsel for HMRC in Glenn was that baldness among women should not be treated as a disability because this would fling open the door to classifying (implicitly undeserving) appearance traits such as ‘unusual height or freckles’ (para 99) as disabilities too.  But before the distant creak of floodgates forces a retreat in principle, is this concern realistic?

I don’t think it is, and I offer two reasons why. First, both the definition of disability in section 6 of the EA 2010 and the ‘severe disfigurement’ provision have an inbuilt threshold of impairment. There is no definition of impairment in the legislation but it is an undemanding test which is to be given its ‘ordinary and natural meaning’ (McNicol v Balfour Beatty [2002] IRLR 711 (CA) para 17) and is not tied to proving medical causation. But, as above, it is still necessary to show a physical ‘wrong’ (Rugamer). This was satisfied for the UTT in Glenn, but not for the Employment Tribunal in Campbell. The distinction, perhaps, is one of demographic prevalence; male pattern baldness among men is very common, whereas severe patchy or total hair loss among women is not. Prevalence feeds into perceptions of appearance normality, making it easier to prove impairment where the stigmatised trait in question makes someone stand out from their peers.

Let’s take short stature as an example. Being much shorter than average height (4ft 8” on the facts, but without a diagnosis of restricted body development) was not an impairment in the Employment Tribunal case of Hussain v Sky In-Home Services Ltd ET/2300908/16 [2017] (unreported). The Tribunal relied on the fact that being short is very common – including among women and children – and therefore not an impairment. Post-Glenn, a different outcome might have been reached on the facts of Hussain. The UTT’s social contextual approach might encourage the Employment Tribunal to recognise that the social barriers facing a man of 4ft 8” are different from those facing a woman or child of the same height.  If a distinction is to be drawn between height and hair loss it might instead present as the arbitrariness of designating a point on a spectrum at which unusual height becomes an impairment. The same challenge applies to high weight – although measurement indexes such as BMI already demonstrate a willingness to categorise bands on a spectrum (and see the AG’s opinion in Kaltoftfor an example of this approach in a legal context).  

The second reason not to overplay fears of opening the floodgates to unmanageable numbers of claims is that experiences from the last three decades suggest this is very unlikely to materialise. Since the severe disfigurement provision was first introduced in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, very few claims have been decided under it. Moreover, reactions from the hair loss community to the decision in Glenn have been mixed. While some have hailed the recognition of severe baldness among women as a long overdue victory, for others it is not so clear cut. It did not help that some sections of the judgment present distress and the desire to conceal as a universal experience among women with hair loss. This confirms what we already know: that many people with visible differences do not self-identify as disabled. In the words of Alopecia UK, ‘for some people with alopecia, hearing the condition described as a disability can feel uncomfortable or not reflective of their own experience.’  My guess would be that a trickle of claims would be more likely than a flood.

Legal recognition is still vital – and in my view the principle of the UTT’s decision in Glenn should be applauded.  But in our increasingly visual society, a community-led reconsideration of the wider relationship between appearance, disability and the law is long overdue.  

(Suggested citation: H Saunders, On a losing streak? Baldness as a disability, UK Labour Law Blog, 24 March 2026 available at https://uklabourlawblog.com/)

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