Swiatek describes the experiences of a friend who was sent to a "specialist" after doctors suggested she might be on the spectrum. “She said she had to say to him she was seeking an Asperger's diagnosis," Swiatek said, "and he went away and said, ‘I don’t know enough to diagnose you.’ And that’s the person she was sent to as first diagnostician.

“I think we have a lack of awareness that impacts you speaking [out to seek help], then you have the stigma and the fear around it, and then just the process is so hard.”

Clark recalls how she was taken aback by the reaction of others when she shared the information with others. “People called me brave,” she says. “Which to to me highlighted the fact there is inherent stigma in it, an element of risk, because people are still challenged.

“I told all of my friends, because when the diagnosis came through I wanted to share that, and I heard back from two people… They were the only people who got back to me.”

She continues: “I think if I had written I had broken my leg I would have been inundated. I have seen everyone since, I have been at social events, and it is not mentioned, as though it is somehow embarrassing. They are lovely people, but I think it is very telling and highly indicative of how society generally responds to something like this.”

It's part of a wider issue, both suggest, of the invisibility of women on the spectrum.

And though there have been improvements in some representations of autistic women in the media, people's most likely point of reference remains Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man, Swiatek says: "It’s really annoying, because where are the kind of awesome, confident women?



"We don’t tend to see them."

Clark says a cultural shift is needed. Until a member of Little Mix comes out as on the spectrum, she says, laughing, people will continue to be challenged by what autistic people – especially female ones – are really like.

Swiatek feels there is an absence of support and resources for those women who are aware of their condition. “I found it is pretty hard to know where to go, and I think we are not necessarily addressing it as a country," she says. “A lot of the [support] groups tend to be very focused on male presentations of Asperger's or women with that more classic autism that fits more of the male presentations: There’s not much for [an] intelligent, quite confident, sociable person.”

Clark says: "You are given a diagnosis and then you are left, really.”





