European Landscape

Mapping the Terrain

Before building solutions, CROWN maps the landscape. Understanding who is working on hair discrimination, textured hair science, and appearance-based bias in Europe — and who is not — reveals where the infrastructure gaps lie and where CROWN’s work is most needed.

Europe is home to approximately 150 million people with textured hair. This population spans the continent’s African diaspora communities, mixed-heritage families, and individuals of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Southern European descent. Yet the institutional infrastructure serving this population — in research, industry, and policy — remains fragmented, under-resourced, and largely invisible.

Three Dimensions of the Landscape

CROWN’s landscape analysis examines three interconnected domains.

Industry

The European haircare market generates an estimated EUR 80 billion annually, yet the segment serving textured and Afro-textured hair remains marginal in research and development investment. Major multinational corporations — L’Oréal, Unilever, Henkel — have made acquisitions in the textured hair space, but diagnostic tools, product formulation data, and clinical research remain overwhelmingly oriented toward straight and wavy hair types. Our industry analysis maps who serves textured hair in Europe, what diagnostic tools exist, and where the gaps in coverage persist.

Institutions

European institutions addressing discrimination — from national equality bodies to international organisations headquartered in Geneva — have made significant progress on racial, gender, and disability discrimination. Appearance-based discrimination, however, falls into a gap between existing mandates. No European institution currently maintains a dedicated programme on hair discrimination, collects systematic data on its prevalence, or provides measurement infrastructure for its assessment. Our institutional analysis examines who is doing what — and what remains undone.

Academic Research

European universities produce world-leading research on discrimination, social psychology, and identity. Yet the specific intersection of hair, appearance, and discriminatory outcomes receives remarkably little attention from European scholars. The research that does exist is overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States. Our academic networks analysis identifies the researchers and centres whose work is closest to CROWN’s mission, and the collaboration opportunities that exist.

Why Landscape Analysis Matters

CROWN’s work does not exist in isolation. The CROWN Discrimination Index builds on existing survey methodologies. The CROWN Diagnostic extends sensor technologies developed in university laboratories. The 360° Protocol integrates evidence-based therapeutic modalities with established clinical foundations.

Understanding the landscape serves three purposes:

Identifying gaps. Where no institution, company, or research programme addresses a documented need, CROWN builds. The Data Gap analysis demonstrates that Europe lacks the foundational data infrastructure that enabled legislative progress in the United States. CROWN’s research programme exists because this gap exists.

Building partnerships. Where existing organisations are doing relevant work, CROWN seeks collaboration rather than duplication. Our partnerships with the University of Geneva and ETH Zürich emerged from systematic landscape analysis — identifying where established institutions had the expertise and interest to contribute to CROWN’s mission.

Informing strategy. Understanding the competitive and institutional landscape ensures that CROWN’s resources are deployed where they create the greatest impact. A rigorous landscape analysis prevents mission drift and ensures every programme addresses a genuine, documented gap.

A Living Analysis

This landscape analysis is not static. As new research emerges, as companies expand their textured hair offerings, as institutions develop new programmes, CROWN updates its mapping. The European context is evolving — slowly, but perceptibly. France’s Serva bill, adopted by the National Assembly in 2024, signals growing legislative attention. Corporate ESG frameworks increasingly encompass appearance-based inclusion. Academic interest in hair discrimination is beginning to grow.

CROWN tracks these developments so that our research, our technology, and our advocacy remain precisely calibrated to the gaps that persist.

Explore the landscape analysis in detail:

• Haircare Industry Landscape — who serves textured hair in Europe, and who does not
• AI Diagnostics: Current State — the state of hair diagnostic technology
• European Institutions — equality bodies, international organisations, and the gaps between their mandates
• Academic Networks — who publishes, who funds, and where collaboration opportunities exist