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While autism is becoming better understood by educators, counsellors, and others who provide support for people on the autism spectrum, experts know that autism itself presents unique challenges and opportunities when it manifests in girls and women, from creating healthy relationships as an adolescent to navigating work and motherhood as an adult.
This month, Jessica Kingsley Publishers Library offers a selection of resources exploring autism in girls and women, including personal narratives, chapters from professional texts, and excerpts from self-development guides.
Challenges become easier to navigate once we discover that we share them with others. In Spectrum Women: Walking to the Beat of Autism, author Barb Cook and 14 other autistic women describe life from a female perspective and present empowering, helpful and supportive insights from their personal experience.
In this provided chapter, autistic writer and editor Maura Campbell recounts her experience seeking and receiving a diagnosis, along the way addressing issues including why fewer women are diagnosed than men, the myths and stereotypes often associated with autism, and how disclosing her own diagnosis helped her connect with other women in the autism community.
Evidence shows that roughly 40 percent of individuals on the autism spectrum will suffer from high levels of anxiety (Van Steensel, Bögels and Perrin 2011). How does that in turn shape the experiences of girls and young women with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)?
In this sample chapter from A Guide to Mental Health Issues in Girls and Young Women on the Autism Spectrum, author Dr. Judy Eaton examines the influences of anxiety and depression through the lens of psychopathology, calling attention to the unique ways girls and women with autism experience them.
Autistic girls can be frequently misunderstood, underestimated, and therefore anxious in a school environment. In her dynamic book Supporting Spectacular Girls: A Practical Guide To Developing Autistic Girls’ Well-Being And Self-Esteem, author Helen Clarke offers a life skills curriculum for autistic girls 11-15, with a focus on strengthening skills for healthy experiences in all aspects of life.
Read this chapter in which Clarke explores how healthy communicating and expressing feelings can help autistic girls improve their wellbeing.
Neurodivergent people often have different communication styles that may be unfamiliar to neurotypical people, such as differences in eye contact, interpreting non-verbal cues, or conversation patterns. Communication and the cultivation of social relationships is one of the topics Sarah Hendricks considers in her book Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum: Understanding Life Experiences from Early Childhood to Old Age, an examination of how autism presents itself in different facets of life from younger to older ages.
This provided chapter offers guidance for professionals who support girls and women in their lifelong journey of forging relationships with other neurotypical and neurodiverse people.
Being an autistic parent can come with both challenges and benefits. In Spectrum Women: Autism and Parenting, three mothers reflect on their experiences growing up as undiagnosed autistics, venturing into and embracing motherhood, and connecting with their children in a unique and powerful way.
In this sample chapter, Renata Jurkevythz, Maura Campbell, and Lisa Morgan share their motherhood journeys, both before and after their own autism diagnoses, describing how their experiences ultimately strengthened their ability to be healthy and committed parents to their children.
