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  • Dyslexia in Girls

    March 25, 2022

    It’s not as easy as we’d like it to be to identify dyslexia in people. In an ideal world, we’d all get popped through a screening programme when we were between the ages of five and ten, and at the other end we’d have a solid, data-driven idea of whether literacy differences are a feature of the way you live, think and learn. And although there are some places in the world where this kind of universal screening is being considered and even implemented, there are a much larger amount of places that don’t have these screening procedures- which can make things tricky when it comes to getting the support you need.

    It makes things tricky on two counts: the first is that it’s easy for dyslexia and literacy differences to be missed, especially in early education, and this means that more and more people are going to be subject to undiagnosed dyslexia, late diagnosis, and likely some problems when it comes to the business of learning. The second problem is that more often than not, the lack of universal screening means that we’re relying more and more on educators and parents to be the catalyst when it comes to spotting symptoms and pushing children forward into the screening procedures that can open up the support that they might need.

    What's the Problem with Selective Screening?

    Firstly - any screening procedures are better than none. Selective screening might miss people out, but it's still one of the most common systems for identifying dyslexia and it does help a lot of people worldwide.

    Educators and parents often do a fantastic job when it comes to spotting dyslexia- but it has to be remembered that they’re not going to be able to spot every case. They’ve not spent years honing their identification skills like a therapist, SENCo or specialist might have done, and they may not have access to in-depth definitions and examples that will allow them to recognise dyslexia in all the ways that it manifests. This means that quite often, some people have an incomplete or simplistic understanding of what dyslexia looks like. And in turn, this runs the risk of people actually missing the less common signs, symptoms and manifestations of dyslexia. If your child isn’t exhibiting textbook dyslexic reading behaviours, for example, you might easily mistake their literacy differences as having a different kind of source like anxiety, educational disengagement due to stress or bullying, a need for more targeted support, or vision impairment.

    And this can cause a few problems when it comes to spotting dyslexia in people who show it slightly differently. We all know what dyslexia ‘looks like’ at this point – difficulty reading and spelling, slower than average vocab retrieval- but the point is, this isn’t a true definition. Many people do have these symptoms, but some people also don’t – and likely even more people learn to mask them from an early age so that’s it’s difficult for even themselves to work out something might be different. And this throws up some difficulties when it comes to diagnosing girls who have dyslexia.

    Do More Boys than Girls Have Dyslexia?

    Opinions tend to vary based on the research they’re coming from. There is some academic-level evidence to suggest that more boys than girls have dyslexia, but there’s also some that suggests incidence isn’t that different across the boy-girl divide.

    There were studies in the 1970s and again 1990s that seemed to indicate that far more school-age boys tend to exhibit dyslexia-style literacy differences and get referred for diagnosis with a higher frequency, but subsequent forays into the subject seem to indicate that boys and girls have anywhere from an equal split to around a 65%-35% split when it comes to having dyslexia. So it depends on who you ask, and what research they’re working from. There is information out there that suggests that the brains of girls and boys who have dyslexia behave slightly differently, but conclusions differ across research sources. There doesn’t appear to be academic research out there at present regarding school-age people who identify as non-binary with dyslexia and their diagnosis frequency, or their experiences.

    Diagnosis statistics between boys and girls display a big disparity. Up until the last few years, far more boys than girls across the board were referred for assessment and screening both in the US and in the UK, meaning that there were a higher portion of girls with dyslexia going undiagnosed than there are boys. Recently more women and girls than ever are being referred for dyslexia screenings, which is great news, as screening is often the first step in people getting access to the support and resources that they need to succeed.

    The slightly less good news is that a pretty high portion of these referrals are in women aged twenty-one and over, meaning that they’ve gone through most of their educational careers without diagnosis and reading support.

    Although diagnosis at any age can have a lot of positive outcomes, the best time to make interventions is agreed by most dyslexia professionals to be during the earlier stages of an individual’s educational journey – which means that there are likely to be many women with dyslexia out there who could be unsupported throughout their entire educational career.

    Why Might we be Missing Dyslexia in Girls?

    Often because of perceived differences in how dyslexia appears to manifest in boys and girls, especially at school age. This doesn’t mean that all boys who have dyslexia get it picked up on, or behave a certain way- far from it – it simply means that most people think a higher portion of boys tend to display the manifestations and behaviours that we associate with ‘textbook dyslexia’, and therefore get access to the screening procedure with a higher frequency.

    Research by Arms, Bickett & Graff (2008) suggests that girls habitually miss out on diagnosis because boys are more likely to cause active disruption by not behaving in class when they’re disengaged – girls are more likely to disengage quietly, to daydream or talk quietly, making it less obvious when something is wrong and a less pressing matter to pursue a diagnosis. This hinges on the idea of differences in how both parties are socialised and unconscious gender biases within the education system, however research like this has come under fire by some people in the neurodiversity community more recently as it’s accused of being a little reductive in terms of school experience and gender.

    As well as the widely recognised symptoms of dyslexia likethese identified by the British and International Dyslexia Associations, a quick trawl around a few sources online suggests that school-age girls could…

    🧠 Mask their symptoms more, either actively or without knowing they’re doing it, and be less likely to admit that they’re having problems with reading than boys might

    🧠 Have different disengagement patterns – boys may be more likely to leave school work and homework not done, whereas girls might be more likely to actually complete the work, but turn it in at a low standard

    🧠 Some sources see girls as being more likely to display signs of reading anxiety from an earlier age, and also for these reading anxieties to be misdiagnosed as shyness

    🧠 Engage in ‘diversions and compensations’ – turning in a piece of reading analysis homework that’s clearly had extra time put into illustrations, for example, as a way of compensating for an expected low mark and a perceived a lack of effort

    🧠 Engage in educational hyper-organisation. Binders and exercise books may be immaculate and well-organised, but work clarity and standard may be below expected, as either a conscious or unconscious way of trying to order and categorise a confusing experience

    🧠 Try to solve the problem themselves to avoid detection – older girls who have set books and set readings are seen as more likely to seek out audiobooks and video readings of the text than boys appear to be so that they can take an active role in discussion and ‘avoid suspicion’.

    These aren’t exclusive identifiers, and they’re certainly not unique to girls with dyslexia – boys with dyslexia might do very similar things, as may girls who don’t have dyslexia. But they’re some things to look out for, as well as the more widely known symptoms of dyslexia, and it might help parents and educators who are looking at an individual with potential reading differences to recognise them properly.

    Where do the Answers Lie?

    As this video on Women and Dyslexia from the British Dyslexia Association opens with, women with dyslexia have some unique experiences – and we need to make sure that we listen. Women with dyslexia are still an under-represented group even within the global dyslexia community – there are fewer high-profile dyslexia influencers who are women, there are fewer high-profile entrepreneurs who are women, and fewer women diagnosed full stop.

    Universal screening can solve a lot of the problems we might encounter when we come to address under-diagnosis in women. But this is an ideal-world scenario, and simply because universal screening isn’t implemented or forthcoming in your area, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t much we can do. What is required across the board is a better understanding of what dyslexia might look like, and an updated definition in public perception of the ways that dyslexia might manifest, especially in terms of how girls (and boys) may show signs and signifiers.

    This can be forwarded in a lot of ways, but the main is that adequate data-driven university-level academic research mines into this area and looks at manifestation as well as incidence- we need to know how, perhaps even moreso than why. And there’s also a need for this information to make it out of university research and into the mainstream information systems so that it’s accessible for the people who need it at a ground level- the parents, individuals, educators, councillors and support staff.

    There is also merit in ensuring that SENCOs and educators, as part of teacher training as well as CPD if possible, receive modern and adequate instruction in these areas. However education is recovering post-pandemic, and educators are reporting to be spread thinner than ever before as a result of the learning catch-up process- the expectation for teachers and teaching assistants to be the last bastion of dyslexia identification if it has been missed in the home is already putting higher demands on a workforce that’s having to juggle a large array of competing priorities.

    Universal screening can solve a lot of problems when it comes to finding dyslexia early, and linking individuals up with the support and the resources that they’ll need especially in the case of girls, who we believe may sometimes show or hide their dyslexia in different ways. It’s part of a process towards accommodating neurodiversity in all its forms and creating a truly inclusive classroom and workplace environment, and whilst it’s not without its teething problems, it’s a system that will likely do good for people whose dyslexia isn’t as obvious as others.

    Further Reading:

    Evans, T. M., Flowers, D. L., Napoliello, E. M. and Eden, G. F. (2014) ‘Sex-specific gray matter volume differences in females with developmental dyslexia’, Brain Struct Funct, 219(3), pp. 1041-54.

    Shaywitz, S. E., Shaywitz, B. A., Fletcher, J. M. and Escobar, M. D. (2018) ‘Prevalence of Reading Disability in Boys and Girls: Results of the Connecticut Longitudinal Study’, JAMA, 264(8), pp. 998-1002.

    Arnett, A.B., Pennington, B.F., Peterson, R.L., Willcutt, E.G., DeFries, J.C. and Olson, R.K. (2017), ‘Explaining the sex difference in dyslexia’. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 58: 719-727.

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