Diversity of Gender at Pyxis
The team at Pyxis have been doing some reflecting recently on the difference between the number of young men compared to the number of young women in our 18 - 25 Pyxis.Social group. There are lots more young men at Pyxis, and one of the things we’ve been mindful of is that this might make it more difficult for young women to feel comfortable coming to the group, or meet others that they have similar experiences, interests, or want to be friends with.
Although our group isn’t just for people with autism, we know that more men are diagnosed as autistic than women (the latest research reported on the National Autistic Society website estimates that there are around 3 autistic males to every 1 autistic woman, although estimates have varied and research and understanding in this area is always evolving). This might be one reason, but the ratio at our 18 - 25 Pyxis.Social group is much further apart than this.
Another thought we have had is that when young women do join the group, they see that there are few other young women and then don’t remain part of the group for long. If this repeats itself in a cycle, we continue to have fewer young women.
As a team we’ve been thinking about what to do about this and we have come up with the following action plan:
We will contact young women that have attended the group in the past, and invite them to join a focus group to think about their experience as women attending the group, and whether we can do anything at Pyxis differently.
We will think with the young men in our group about how it might feel to be a young woman joining the group and how they might make them feel more comfortable (we think our young men are great and do their best to make everyone feel welcome, but part of our ethos is that there are always different ways of handling social situations). As part of this we’ll also talk to parents and carers about this so they can share their thoughts and join in the conversation.
We will be pausing referrals on the 18 - 25 group for now, while we explore whether we can gather a group of young women that might want to join the group at the same time to help this feel more comfortable. The aim is to invite these young people to join simultaneously in January 2025.
While we’ve talked about “women” throughout this post, we’ll also be thinking about the experiences of those who might identify as transgender or non-binary as part of this project.
As always, we are keen to hear the thoughts of our community and if you are reading this and have any thoughts, questions or ideas, you can direct them to hello@pyxis.life.
