Perhaps we should take a look at another social prejudice against women. You know, those too ignorant to research, understand, and put it all in the proper context.

Therefore, the author of the article is dealing with this disorder, and the tone taken in the slideshow implies that it’s entirely possible she’s down on herself for having ADD/ADHD. I would go back and read her work and then compare it to this slideshow to determine for yourself whether or not you see her attitude toward ADD/ADHD as being, necessarily, a detriment. She might very well have a prejudice against women who have ADD/ADHD, and be expressing her own frustration with her perceived limitations as applying to all women who have ADD/ADHD.

The interesting thing I’m noticing too is that ADD/ADHD fits so neatly into gendered stereotypes. If that’s the case, I’d want to be EXTREMELY certain I wasn’t being pigeonholed by some doctor who diagnosed ADD/ADHD because of cultural stereotypes about what anxiety, talkativeness, and some of the other more “obviously” female problems associated with ADD imply. Reminds me way too much of doctors 100 years ago (approx.) who diagnosed women with “hysterical wombs” and recommended hysterectomies. A lot of unnecessary hysterectomies were performed because of social prejudice against women.

The truth, of course, is that men and women are both responsible for understanding one another and learning to be in a relationship, but unfortunately, both men and women have been led to believe otherwise.

I belong to a couple of women specific ADHD support sites (As well as general) because it’s impossible to escape and untangle social pressures and ADHD for women. And I come from a pretty non-traditional background. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for many women who don’t.

Women with ADHD face different challenges than men and boys do for a couple of different reasons:
1) They’re often diagnosed later than men, meaning that it has different impacts on indentity formation and their support networks are different. If you’re diagnosed when you’re 10, you’re a child, hopefully with a network of support from family and school. Conversely, if you’re diagnosed at 27, you’ll hopefully still have a support system, but more likely than not, it’s more diffuse and you’re expected to be part of others’ support systems.
2) The types of symptoms of the versions of ADHD women/girls have are less obvious than the types that men/boys have. I have a guy-friend with ADHD who was permitted to wander around the classroom in the 4th grade because it was evident that he had ADHD. In the meantime, in the fourth grade, I (a woman with ADHD), constantly was ahead of the reading in my classes, my teacher encouraged me because she thought I was advanced. I was, but in large part, my behavior was driven by my inability to pay attention in class.
This article stated its arguments (or whatever you want to call them) in some pretty callous ways, but remember, one branch of feminism is devoted to recognizing the differences between women and men’s symptoms. How many women have died from heart attacks because the widely published warning signs of heart attacks are the symptoms more frequent in men?
3) The expectations for women’s behavior is different. For example,as a previous poster stated, women are usually given a lot of responsibility in society for making relationships work. We’re also supposed to be planners and multitaskers (personally, I do multitask, but 90% of the time it’s by accident, usually because I forgot what I was doing, start something else, find what I was doing before, go back to it, etc. etc.)

As a woman with ADHD, I think that there is a lot of dialogue that should happen. For one, the popular culture version of ADHD as a “Blah,blah, blah, ohh, look, something shiny!” thing has got to go (and cannot go soon enough, ADHD is not cute). In that way, the article was actually a step in the right direction, it recognizes that ADHD actually causes some pretty painful issues, something that the popular paradigm completely neglects. It’s not something that just goes away when you’re out of school and you don’t have to sit behind a desk and raise your hand. For most of us, it’s their when you’re out on dates, it’s there when you have your own kids, and it’s there when you’re cooking (yeah… raise your hand if you’ve set off the fire alarm multiple times). And there’s not many resources out there to help you figure out how to handle those parts.

Furthermore, many women, including myself, have had the experience of being ignored notwithstanding that they’re direct. Or they’re criticised for supposedly being bossy when a man would be considered straightforward. You can’t win.

As I said, it’s about power.

That seems decent. Or just asking for clarification. My friend is somewhat ADD and occasionally she’ll finish saying something rather long and I’ll just be like: “well, that sounded like a fascinating line of reasoning but I think you skipped a step or 5 in describing your thought process there? The link between walruses and public transportation still escapes me” often shortened to: “wait, what? Say the middle bit again.”