Hair Loss News

Female Pattern Baldness: Signs, Causes And What Helps

3 August 2026 · 3 min read

Around eight million women in the UK experience hair loss. It is far more common than the silence around it suggests, and it behaves quite differently from the male version.

The most important difference is this: in men, thinning hair is usually just genetics. In women it frequently is not, and a good proportion of cases have a cause that can be identified and treated.

What female pattern hair loss looks like

It does not usually start at the temples, and it rarely produces a bald patch. It shows up as diffuse thinning across the top of the head, with the hairline itself generally staying put.

The first thing most women notice is their parting getting wider. Then more scalp showing under bright light, a ponytail that feels thinner in the hand, and needing more hair to make the same style work.

Where men are graded on the Norwood scale, women are usually graded on the Ludwig scale, which runs in three stages:

Ludwig 1: mild thinning at the parting, easily hidden by how you wear your hair
Ludwig 2: the parting is visibly wider and the volume loss is obvious to you, if not yet to everyone else
Ludwig 3: diffuse thinning across the crown with the scalp clearly visible through the hair

Why the cause matters more than it does in men

Female hair loss has a longer list of possible drivers, and several of them are reversible:

Thyroid conditions, both under and overactive, which are common and easily tested
Iron deficiency, with or without full anaemia, which is one of the commonest findings
Hormonal change: pregnancy, the months after giving birth, stopping or starting contraception, perimenopause and menopause
Polycystic ovary syndrome
Telogen effluvium, a heavy shed a few months after severe illness, surgery, crash dieting or acute stress, which usually recovers on its own
Traction alopecia from tight ponytails, braids, buns and extensions worn for years
Some medications, which is worth reviewing with your GP rather than stopping anything yourself

This is why the first step for a woman is not a clinic, it is a blood test. See your GP before you consider surgery. If the cause is a thyroid problem or low iron, treating it may bring the hair back on its own, and a transplant carried out while an underlying condition is still active is likely to be wasted.

One pattern worth knowing separately: a hairline that is receding with loss of the eyebrows, or shiny, smooth skin where hair used to be, is not ordinary pattern loss and should be looked at by a dermatologist promptly. Scarring types of hair loss behave differently and the follicle can be lost permanently.

Can women have a hair transplant?

Yes, and results can be excellent, but suitability is assessed more carefully than for men.

The reason is donor supply. A transplant moves DHT resistant hair from the back and sides. In diffuse female thinning the donor area is often thinning too, which limits what can be taken. Women with a defined problem area, a high or receding hairline, a wide parting or loss from traction or scarring, tend to be the best candidates.

For women the technique used is usually FUT, which has a success rate of around 97% and does not require the head to be shaved, only the strip area. That last point matters to a lot of people.

Where surgery is not appropriate, non-surgical treatment from around £25 a month can slow the loss and improve density in suitable patients.

Finding out what is actually going on

Get the medical causes ruled out with your GP first. Then, if you want to know what can be done with the hair you have, read more about hair loss treatment for women or book a free video assessment.

Around four in ten of the people we assess turn out to be suitable for surgery. We would rather tell you no than take your money, and with female hair loss that answer is often to treat the cause first.

If you want the comparison with men specifically, we have covered the differences between male and female hair loss separately.

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