BOSTON — Every woman seems to have a haircut horror story.

Muslim-American women have ducked into salon backrooms, closets and basements to get their hair styled. One woman remembers hiding behind a piece of cloth draped over a doorway. Another recounts a haircut in a restroom. Others describe gut-twisting moments when strange men walked in and saw their bare heads anyway.

Shamso Ahmed knows the feeling — and she is determined to make a change. Ahmed, who wears a hijab, opened a women-only salon last month designed for Muslim women whose religious beliefs include not exposing their hair in front of men who are strangers.

“I really want to make a difference in people’s lives by creating a place where women feel comfortable, safe,” said Ahmed, 34. “With this space, I can guarantee that there’s not going to be guys that walk in, so women will have the privacy they are looking for.”

Men are not allowed in Shamso Hair Studio and Spa, an L-shaped beauty parlor in Boston’s South End. The employees are all female; the windows are frosted to prevent passersby seeing inside; and customers must punch a code into a special lock to enter.

Shamso offers haircuts, manicures, pedicures and massages, as well as lesser-known services such as henna body art and hijab wraps.

Ahmed’s shop is one of very few women-only hair salons nationwide, according to Elisabeth Becker, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia who researches urban Muslim communities. Becker said she knows of just one other: Le’Jemalik Salon in New York City. Huda Quhshi, 39, who founded Le’Jemalik Salon in early 2017, said that hijab-wearing women drive two or three hours to get their hair done at her salon.

Becker said the demand among Muslim-Americans for women-only spa services far exceeds the supply. As of 2017, there were 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. Of these, roughly 4 in 10 women wear the hijab.

“(It’s a) huge, almost fully unserved population,” Becker said.

Hadia Mubarak, a hijab-wearing assistant professor at Guilford College who researches gender in Islam, said it is a common misconception that observant Muslim women do not need to do their hair because it remains covered in public. Hijab-wearing women spend a lot of time at home with their heads uncovered, she said. Women also seek places where they can remove their hijabs and sometimes attend special family events such as weddings and engagement parties with their heads bare and their hair styled.

Massachusetts’s gender discrimination law prohibits all-male or all-female spaces in some contexts, such as in public transportation, but private businesses have been allowed to cater only to women. Women-only gyms, for example, are specifically allowed under the law.

Ahmed said she wants to open salons in at least five more states. For now, though, she is reveling in the achievement of a dream she has pursued since age 12.

Ahmed and her family emigrated to the United States when she was 10 to escape civil war in Somalia. She grew up idolizing her mother and the prophet Muhammad’s wife Khadija, both of whom pursued careers in business — her mother as the owner of a coffee shop, restaurant and grocery store in Somalia, and Khadija as a merchant. Ahmed vowed she would become a business executive and open a salon.

“I would always tell my mother, ‘Mom, I’m going to be my own boss when I grow up,’?” Ahmed said.

Since the salon’s doors opened in late February, Shamso Hair Studio has been flooded with far more requests for bookings than it can fill. Ahmed said she awoke the day after the opening to 1,700 messages — from women who never want another haircut horror story again.