Autism, Gender Expectations, and the Freedom to Be Yourself at Work
Some autistic people may feel less constrained by traditional ideas about how men and women are supposed to behave. That can create misunderstandings, but it can also become a real strength in collaboration, creative work, communication, and the ability to connect with very different people.
There are a lot of social rules surrounding gender that nobody ever writes down.
Men are expected to behave in certain ways. Women are expected to behave in others. Certain clothes, interests, emotions, communication styles, colors, hobbies, and even ways of sitting are treated as masculine or feminine.
Most people seem to absorb many of those expectations automatically.
But autistic people do not always experience social rules in the same way.
Some of us may notice a rule and ask a very simple question:
Why?
And when the only answer is “because that is what men do” or “because that is what women do,” the rule may not feel particularly convincing.
That does not mean every autistic person is transgender, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, or uncomfortable with their sex.
It simply means that some autistic people may feel less pressure to organize their personality around conventional ideas of masculinity and femininity.
The research shows a real overlap
Research has repeatedly found an association between autism and gender diversity.
Autism and gender diversity overlap more often than chance alone would suggest
A large 2020 study analyzed data from five datasets containing more than 640,000 people. Gender-diverse participants were substantially more likely to report an autism diagnosis than cisgender participants.
The study did not establish one simple reason for that overlap. Researchers continue to investigate why autism and gender diversity appear together more often than they do in the general population.
SPARK for Autism also summarizes research showing that autistic people report LGBTQ identities and gender identities outside a strict male-female binary at higher rates than the general population.
That evidence matters, but it does not mean gender diversity explains every autistic person's relationship with gender.
There is another possibility worth considering.
Some autistic people may simply feel less attached to the social rules surrounding gender in the first place.
Gender identity and gender expectations are not the same thing
This distinction is important.
A man can be completely comfortable being a man while having personality traits, interests, emotional patterns, clothing preferences, or friendships that society labels as feminine.
A woman can be completely comfortable being a woman while behaving in ways society traditionally labels masculine.
Someone else may identify as transgender or nonbinary.
Those are not interchangeable experiences.
Removing the mask does not necessarily reveal a different gender. Sometimes it simply reveals a person who never saw much reason to follow all the rules built around gender in the first place.
Autism may involve more than one kind of masking
Masking is usually discussed as the process of hiding autistic traits in order to appear more neurotypical.
But there can be another layer.
An autistic person may also learn how they are expected to perform masculinity or femininity.
An autistic man may learn that he is expected to suppress certain emotions, avoid particular interests, communicate in a certain way, or never appear “too feminine.”
An autistic woman may learn an entirely different set of expected behaviors.
In both cases, the person can end up performing two things at once: appearing neurotypical and appearing appropriately masculine or feminine.
What happens when both masks come off?
The answer does not have to be dramatic.
The person may simply become more comfortable expressing interests, emotions, communication styles, relationships, and creativity without constantly asking whether they are acting enough like a man or enough like a woman.
That authenticity can matter at work.
Constant social performance consumes energy.
Energy that does not have to be spent maintaining an unnecessary role can instead go into thinking, creating, solving problems, and working with other people.
Connecting with people instead of categories
One potential workplace strength is social range.
Someone who feels less constrained by rigid gender expectations may find it easier to approach coworkers primarily as individuals rather than first deciding how they should behave because the other person is male or female.
Instead of:
“How should I act around a woman?”
or:
“How should I talk to another man?”
the question can become much simpler:
Who is this person, and how do they communicate best?
That approach can make it easier to work with people across different personalities, ages, backgrounds, identities, communication styles, and social groups.
Cross-gender friendships can also be misunderstood
There is another side to this.
An autistic employee may have an easy, personal friendship with a coworker of another sex without viewing that relationship as romantic or unusual.
They may simply have found someone they communicate well with.
But not everyone interprets relationships through the same social rules.
Someone who is more strongly invested in traditional expectations about male-female relationships may interpret the same friendship as flirtation, competition, favoritism, or something threatening.
That can create gossip, resentment, exclusion, or conflict even when the employees involved see nothing unusual about their relationship.
Employers should be careful not to turn assumptions about gender into workplace conclusions without evidence of actual inappropriate behavior.
Being able to work with almost everyone is a business advantage
Technical ability matters, but many jobs also depend on being able to understand and work with very different people.
Mixed-gender teams
Less dependence on rigid gender roles may make collaboration across mixed teams feel more natural and less socially complicated.
Client relationships
Approaching people as individuals rather than stereotypes can help create stronger one-on-one communication with clients and customers.
Community outreach
Roles that require working with many different communities can benefit from employees who are comfortable moving between very different social groups.
Team communication
An employee who is less dependent on gender-coded communication may sometimes act as a bridge between coworkers who approach situations very differently.
This can become especially valuable in creative work
Marketing, web development, design, branding, photography, writing, product development, user experience, advertising, and communications all require people to imagine how someone else might experience an idea.
A team can easily become trapped by assumptions.
Men want this.
Women want that.
This color is masculine.
That design is feminine.
This audience will respond to emotion.
That audience only cares about technical details.
Those assumptions may sometimes be useful shortcuts.
They can also become lazy thinking.
Maybe one advantage of not naturally fitting every social expectation is that you can see possibilities outside of them.
An employee who naturally thinks less rigidly about masculinity and femininity may ask different questions.
- Why does this product need to look masculine?
- Why are we assuming women will respond to this design?
- Would the same message actually work for both audiences?
- Are we designing for real people or for stereotypes?
- Who are we unintentionally excluding?
That does not automatically make every autistic person a better marketer or designer.
But for the right individual, the ability to see beyond conventional social categories can be an important creative advantage.
The strength is not understanding “men” or “women.” It is understanding people.
Traditional approach
Social expectations can encourage people to first categorize someone by gender and then decide how they are supposed to interact with that person.
That can work socially, but it can also introduce assumptions that have little to do with the individual standing in front of them.
Individual approach
An autistic person who feels less attached to those expectations may instead focus on the person's communication style, interests, values, needs, humor, and personality.
In the right workplace, that can create unusually broad social range.
Do not mistake social nonconformity for a workplace problem
Employers do not need employees to be conventionally masculine or feminine.
They need employees who can do their jobs, work appropriately with others, communicate, solve problems, and contribute to the organization.
An employee who does not participate in traditional male bonding, who communicates easily with women, who has close friendships across genders, or who expresses interests that do not fit conventional expectations is not automatically behaving unprofessionally.
The relevant workplace question should be whether the person's actual conduct is appropriate.
Not whether the employee fits somebody else's idea of what a man or woman is supposed to look like.
A workplace that gives people room to be themselves may discover that the employee who fits into fewer social boxes can work effectively with more of the people outside them.
Different does not have to mean difficult
Autism can affect how people experience social expectations, and gender expectations are part of that social world.
For some autistic people, being less attached to those rules may create misunderstandings.
But it may also allow them to connect with people across traditional boundaries, move comfortably between different groups, and bring perspectives into creative work that others might never consider.
The goal should not be making autistic employees fit more neatly into masculine or feminine expectations.
The goal should be giving them enough freedom to show what they can contribute when they are allowed to be themselves.