It’s International Women’s Day 2025 and gender inequality and health inequalities still have major consequences for neurodivergent women and girls. Whilst there have been changes and improvements (for example, the narrowing gap of numbers of men and women diagnosed with autism and ADHD), there is still a long way to go.
It is thought that 80% of autistic girls don’t know that they are autistic by the age of 18. They are diagnosed on average 6 years later than their male counterparts (McCrossin, 2022; BBC News, 2022).
Justice for Black Girls state that many Black autistic women and girls aren’t diagnosed as children, if ever, because they don’t fit the white male-centred profile of autism.
17.9% of autistic women in one study felt that they had previously been misdiagnosed with a personality disorder (Kentrou et al., 2024). I fall into this group too.
23.5% of women with ADHD were found to have attempted suicide compared to 3.3% of women without ADHD (Fuller-Thompson et al., 2020).
Women with ADHD have been found to have triple the prevalence of insomnia, chronic pain, suicidal ideation and anxiety disorders (Fuller-Thompson et al., 2016).
50-75% of the 1 million women in the UK with ADHD are estimated to be undiagnosed and may be experiencing poor health and socio-economic outcomes (ADHD Foundation, 2021).
I hope that one-day these statistics won’t be quite so depressing. Like I said, change is happening, but it needs to continue and it needs to go further. There are so many neurodivergent women who inspire me endlessly in this activism space. I shan’t name them individually because I will miss people out, but please do check out Autistic Girls Network – a wonderful charity which I am honoured to be a Trustee for.
Let’s all celebrate the incredible women in our lives today.
Love, Emily x
