International Women's Day 2018

Happy international Women's Day to all of us, especially the autistic women. Lets try and encourage ourselves, our clinicians, our educators, anyone to be aware of the huge amount of unconscious bias that is affecting and preventing the diagnose of autistic women and girls. So many times as a parent have I noticed the exact same behaviour between my children and marvelled how differently it's labelled and how much that could affect obtaining a diagnosis.

"She's shy, that's ok for a girl because of course she lacks confidence"
"Of course he doesn't talk much, he's a boy, not emotional like a girl"
"When she fights it's just a cat fight, all girls do that!"
"So he hit someone in the playground, all boys do that!"
 etc, etc.  Of course none of these described behaviours by themselves would be worthy of diagnosis. As a sideline to notice that your child get's frustrated and anxious about social contact and doesn't know how to react "appropriately" then they are worth bearing in mind.

In honour to some fabulous autistic women I have the pleasure of knowing in my life, some of their blogs are here.  Please note that woman is not necessarily the right term to describe someone born biologically female, and that you don't have to be born female to be a woman. Especially for autistic people who rarely fit into traditional gender roles.

http://annsautism.blogspot.co.uk/

http://britishautismadvocate.simpl.com/

http://ceibhfhion.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/seven-things-i-would-like-to-tell-you.html