It's actually inspired by what they did with young women who were considered traitors in places like liberated Holland at the end of World War II (ie young women who had slept with Nazis). It has also happened in Northern Ireland during the troubles, or so I am told (and it is depicted in the film Ryan's Daughter) - again, for similar reasons. I also seem to recall a horrible viral video I happened to see of a Portugeuse woman punishing her teenage daughter for bullying someone who had chemotherapy. But I just did a quick google search, and apparently that isn't true. She was being punished for having premarital sex. Horrible either way, and I feel desperately sorry for the girl in the video (who is hysterical).

In my novel (The Thistlewood Curse), it's a flashback during (from memory) the second or third chapter, where the protagonist remembers her teenage years, living with her uptight religious mother. She has her head shaved for lying to her mother about meeting up with a boy.