15th Oct 2026 by Adjust
Neurodiversity and Women: What Managers Need to Know
Our Neurodiversity Consultant, Aimee Fairfull-Morse, has guest written this blog about neurodiversity and women. Aimee assesses and diagnoses neurodivergent people, is ADHD herself, and helped create our bitesize Neurodiversity and Women session. In this blog, she shares what managers should know about stereotypes, masking, late diagnosis and hormones.
Stereotypes get in the way
Most people still picture ADHD and autism through a narrow lens: an autistic boy obsessed with trains, or a boy bouncing off the walls with ADHD. Autistic women’s special interests can look completely ordinary by comparison, a teenage girl who is completely absorbed in Taylor Swift, for example, even though that is exactly the same kind of special interest.
ADHD impulsivity does not always look like a boy running around a classroom either. For me, it once looked like deciding at 2am during lockdown that I needed to bleach my hair bright blonde. It happened, and it was not a good idea. That’s impulsivity too, just a different shape of it.
Because ADHD rates in women are rising quickly at the moment, some of this gets waved away. Women who describe traits that don’t fit the classic picture can be seen as overdramatic, or told “everyone’s like that, everyone does that.” Being dismissed like that can leave someone feeling invalid, even though the experience is real. The same impulsivity that reads as bubbliness in a woman, or a faster pace of speech, can be taken far more seriously when a man shows it.
When we deliver this session for women’s networks, this is usually the point where the room shifts. Women recognise themselves in these examples, often for the first time, and start to see ADHD or autism behind traits long put down to personality.
Masking, and what it costs
Masking means putting on a mask of being neurotypical, to fulfil the social role expected of you. In the workplace, it often gets praised as being professional, rather than recognised for what it is: not being your true, authentic self for long periods of time.
Keeping that mask in place takes real effort, and holding it there day after day is exhausting. Research consistently shows that camouflaging in autistic adults links to higher anxiety, depression, and burnout. That matches what I see in the women I work with. It’s a big part of why so many ADHD and autistic women reach burnout in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, after years of holding a mask in place.
Women often carry a larger mental load at home as well as at work. Combine that with the exhaustion of masking, and sometimes it can all just come crashing down.
Why so many women are diagnosed late, or not at all
The tools clinicians use to diagnose ADHD and autism were built and tested mostly on boys and men. I saw this first hand in assessments. Autistic girls often have stronger verbal communication and less obvious social difficulty than the classic picture of autism. ADHD girls are often not as hyperactive, and don’t show the disruptive behaviour some boys do. Neither of those things makes ADHD or autism milder in girls. It means the presentation doesn’t match what the diagnostic criteria were written to spot.
Research from Durham University found that around 80% of autistic women are misdiagnosed at some point, often with something else entirely: borderline personality disorder, an eating disorder, bipolar disorder, or anxiety. Some of that comes down to the diagnostic tools themselves. Some of it comes down to how women are expected to behave generally. Women are socialised to be more accommodating and less direct. An autistic woman who communicates directly, in a way a man with the same neurotype might not be questioned for, can be read as blunt or difficult, rather than autistic.
A woman who gets diagnosed as an adult has usually gone years without the self understanding or support that an earlier diagnosis could have given her. Then, when she is finally diagnosed, that diagnosis is sometimes taken less seriously simply because it came later in life rather than in childhood. It can also be harder to get a diagnosis as an adult, with longer waiting lists.
For managers, this matters in a practical way. A woman on your team might not know yet that she’s ADHD or autistic. She might only get a diagnosis as an adult, sometimes prompted by a life change that brings years of managing things alone to a head.
Hormones
Hormones move through big shifts across a woman’s life: puberty, monthly cycles, pregnancy, postnatally, perimenopause, and menopause. ADHD women are around five times more likely to experience postnatal depression and anxiety. Very little research looks at how hormones affect neurodivergent women across their lives. We need more, because better evidence means earlier diagnosis and better treatment.
Neurodivergent people often already find dopamine regulation, getting things done, processing information, working memory, and sleep more difficult than most people. Hormone shifts make all of these harder still, right at the point when the strategies someone relies on take more energy and focus than there is to give.
That overlap is part of why perimenopause, menopause, and the postnatal period are common points for women to get diagnosed with ADHD or autism. Many women have spent years masking and getting by on coping strategies. I think of these as crux points, times when it all comes to a head, alongside everything else going on in someone’s life at that stage
Building workplaces that suit every type of mind means understanding the experience of neurodivergent women too. Find out more with our Neurodiversity Understood Lunch and Learn and bitesize Neurodiversity and Women session.
We run other intersectional bitesize courses, including Neurodiversity and LGBTQIA+, in partnership with Char Bailey, and Neurodiversity and Race, in partnership with Diverse Matters.
Read our other blogs by neurodivergent women:
