Article - Autistic women in the working world

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Rachael Lucas's "long history of walking out of very good jobs" began in her 20s after she quit her postgraduate degree at the University of Ulster. Working in different fields as a horse trainer, a childcare specialist, teacher trainer, and an advertising salesperson respectively, she would quickly become overwhelmed by the social elements of her job.

"I was good at the job," she says, "but after six months walked out because I just couldn't cope with it." She eventually turned to temping: "I became very good at going into a situation and doing three or four months of very intense work and then being able to take a breather."

After two decades in work, Lucas was diagnosed with autism at the age of 44. She now recognizes that her previous inability to keep a job was down to autism burnout, a colloquial term that describes what happens when people on the autism spectrum become overwhelmed and exhausted by stress. Choosing to work so infrequently was, she says, "my own way of managing the autism."

Auticon, a German-founded social enterprise, is looking to change this by going on a recruitment drive for autistic women. The modus operandi of this IT consultancy start-up, which now has offices across Germany as well as in Paris and London, is to directly recruit autistic tech workers and then place them within other companies while supporting them at work.

The company has over 100 employees, and according to Viola Sommer, director and head of operations at Auticon in the UK, four-fifths of them are autistic. With investment from Richard Branson and UK charity the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the five-year-old company is already turning profit as it tries to help more autistic people get the most out of their skills. That goes for women, too.

"A lot of autistic women tell me they're trying to get a diagnosis, but the GP or psychiatrist says they can't be autistic because they are female," explains Sommer. "If GPs and psychiatrists are thinking that, it could also happen in the workplace."

It's exhausting for people [when] a huge chunk of your cognitive capacity is put towards acting 'normal,'" Sommer explains. "But if everyone knows you're autistic, you don't have to worry about it, you can be yourself and focus on the actual work."

While these expectations offer women some tips on how to conform, they can also stop them from getting the most out of their passions, commonly known as "special interests" to those on the autism spectrum.

Swiatek found that being a PA in marketing didn't match with her interests, which include Arsenal Football Club players and their pet dogs. Neither did the office chatter expected of women: "Some of the conversations around TV and fashion and what other people are doing and wearing can be quite difficult to navigate. If you struggle to understand the conversational rules and boundaries, you won't engage in those conversations."

The isolation this causes might seem like a minor challenge, but it melds into a larger problem of how to deal with offices' expectations of female workers. Some autistic women with a special interest in fashion or beauty may easily navigate office dress codes, but for others, "wearing something like tights or a tight blouse or high heels is going to be more challenging," says Swiatek.

This can be down to a simple inability to pick up on the unwritten rules maintaining what is work-appropriate, or a more complex difficulty to cope with the sensory stimuli of tight-fitting clothing. "Lots of autistic women would not be able to keep up with extreme beauty standards because of sensory issues, such as extreme sensitivities to tactile stimuli," Sommer explains. "Some people only feel comfortable wearing loose clothing, which is a challenge if you work in a corporate environment."

It's just one of the many complexities that women with autism must deal with in the workplace. For now, Auticon is focusing on getting more autistic people into jobs, but the eventual hope is that such an initiative will not need to exist at all. "There's a lack of willingness to accept different minds and cognitive styles and our entire society is kind of built for extrovert people," Sommers says. "Most of the autistic women I've met have incredible coping structures that they come up with them themselves, but we should work towards the point where that's not necessary."

What about the other jobs like finance, arts, writing and music or any other job for that matter? There are lots of different jobs that women on the spectrum can do. Not just IT.