Many people agree that dyslexic minds have a whole set of different strengths to their neurotypical colleagues when it comes to the world of work. These could be abilities to cut to the core of the matter, organisational strengths, creativity and innovation, or even just an ability to think outside the box. The business world is changing and we’re finally beginning to see the potential in dyslexic thinking, and people everywhere are using it as a means to be more open about their dyslexia and how it fits in with the work they do.
The thing is, when we tend to talk about careers in which people with dyslexia excel, we still tend to get stuck in the same rut as we did fifteen to twenty years ago. There are two sides to it: we either champion the CEOs and business moguls who’ve built multi-million dollar enterprises from the ground up, or we focus on the very creative sorts- artists and creators who communicate with us through incredible visual means. And these individuals are great role models – seeing high-profile people with neurodivergent brains is so important for both young people and adults alike- but the idea that there’s just these two options is maybe a little insulting.
Women with dyslexia are everywhere. Between ten and fifteen percent of women you meet every day are likely to have it – and not all of them are going to be sat at the head of a multi-national corporation, and not all of them are going to be artists and creators. In fact, most of them aren’t. Women with dyslexia have an insanely wide array of jobs – creative and corporate, scientific and scholarly, in the limelight or behind the scenes – and it’s about time we broke away from only talking about business brains and creative brains as sites of dyslexic career excellence. We can do better than this reductive ‘household name or bust’ narrative – fulfilling careers that women with dyslexia to excel in are everywhere, and younger generations of dyslexic women need to know that, too.
So instead, we’re re-naming this article '8 Women With Dyslexia With Amazing Careers' - despite not fitting into the mould of the artist or the entrepreneur that we still seem to be a little bit stuck on, even in 2022. Some are names you'll have heard of, some you won't- -but they're all proof that women with dyslexia have something amazing to contribute to all kinds of fields.
Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE is an astronomer and space scientist, as well as a research fellow and honorary research associate at University College London in the department of Science and Technology Studies. You’ve probably seen presenting The Sky at Night, and she’s a vocal advocate for girls getting into STEM- especially girls with dyslexia and other types of neurodivergent minds.
Erin Brockovich (yes, the Erin Brockovich from Erin Brockovich) was labelled in school: “The Girl Least Likely to Succeed”. She’s dyslexic and struggled in early education, but thanks to some inspiring teaching experiences went on to become an internationally renowned lawyer. She helped win the largest class-action lawsuit in US history, worth $333 million, and had to read through thousands of pages of medical records and legal briefs that she often found difficult get through. Brockovich maintains that it’s actually dyslexia that helped work as a lawyer and she remains a powerful advocate for people with literacy differences in the workplace and in education.
It wasn’t until her son was diagnosed with dyslexia that Nancy Brinker—winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and former White House Chief of Protocol—identified that she had dyslexia too. She struggled with math and spelling in school but found ways to use memorisation techniques and in-class performance to supplement her poor scores in standardised testing. She’s made history, both in her governmental roles and in spearheading cancer research and treatment strategies, and urges parents and children not to fear dyslexia. Best one-liner: “You can’t be discouraged just because you’re a round peg that doesn’t fit in a square hole.”
Erna Solberg is the former Prime Minister of Norway. Elected in 2013, she had headed up her party since 2004 and has been open about her dyslexia a number of times in the press. Diagnosed at 13, she’s well-known for talking about the struggle that dyslexia can be when it comes to high-profile careers, and the importance of realising that whilst you may not come across as the ‘ideal student’ on paper, there’s no end to the potential that you have.
Cher is… Cher, to be honest. Whether you know her from her award-winning acting career, habit of putting out bop after bop in the 80s and 90s, or even her more recent hilarious antics on Twitter, Cher is proof that dyslexia and a less-than-ideal start in education doesn’t mean that you can’t go on to achieve something amazing. After having dropped out of school due to reading and writing differences at the age of fifteen, she went on to have one of the most celebrated musical careers of any woman in the music industry to date.
Dr. Carol Greider was a 25-year-old graduate student when she established herself as one of the world’s pioneering health researchers. Despite being put in remedial classes in school and having difficulty spelling and sounding out words, Greider and her research team discovered telomerase, an enzyme that plays an important role in cell division and has real potential to fight cancer and age-related disease. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2009, and believes that it’s dyslexia and its problem-solving ability that is at the core of her outstanding skills as a scientist.
Ann Bancroft is an Arctic explorer and traveller. She was the first woman to go to both the North Pole and the South Pole, and headed an all-woman group towards the South Pole again in 1992. There’s also the small matter of her being the joint first woman to ski across Antarctica, the leader of the first east-west crossing of Greenland, and the fact she’s been named woman of the year by no less than around ten different publications to date.
But let’s not forget that women with dyslexia don’t only have the potential to be great leaders or innovators in research- they have the potential to be fantastic readers and writers, too. Agatha Christie is one of the world’s most renowned authors, and probably the number one mystery writer of all time – and she’s widely considered to have had dyslexia. Although we’ve no conclusive proof, the way she described her own writing symptoms tracks almost exactly with dyslexia, despite the fact that it wasn’t properly recognised or supported in her lifetime. She was also an early adopter of assistive tech – when she broke her arm in 1952, she worked out that using dictation devices for later transcription was actually a huge boon to her writing process, and continued with the practise long after she’d healed.