Missing from the Narrative: A Seven-Decade Scoping Review of the Inclusion of Black Autistic Women and Girls in Autism Research
Black autistic girls are nearly absent from research; plan studies that recruit and analyze them on purpose.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lovelace et al. (2022) read every autism paper they could find from 1944 to 2021. They hunted for studies that centered Black autistic girls or women. They also checked if any used an intersectionality lens.
The team followed scoping-review rules. They mapped the literature instead of pooling effect sizes.
What they found
Out of decades of work, only three studies put Black autistic females at the center. None used intersectionality. The gap is stark: this group is almost invisible in research.
The review shows scholarly neglect, not a lack of need.
How this fits with other research
Gilmore et al. (2022) extends the story. They gave the same group numbers: Black autistic youth aged 16-26 report more depressive symptoms than White peers. The inclusion gap now has measurable harm.
Sawyer et al. (2014) is a clear predecessor. They already saw that most autism papers skip ethnicity labels. Lovelace et al. zooms in and shows the cost for Black girls.
O'Connor et al. (2024) seems to clash. Their big review centers autistic girls and women, so it looks like progress. But Lovelace et al. would have captured it, and still only three papers focused on Black autistic females. The contradiction is only surface-deep: the field listens to girls, but not yet to Black girls.
Why it matters
If you write a grant, run an intake, or teach a class, treat Black autistic girls as a priority, not an afterthought. Add race and gender filters to your recruitment plan. Ask participants how these identities intersect. Partner with Black community groups. Every extra step chips away at 77 years of silence.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The intersectional experiences of Black autistic women and girls (BAWG) are missing from medical and educational research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Understanding the intersectional experiences of BAWG is important due to the rising prevalence of autism in Black children and girls (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020) and the concurrent lack of availability of culturally relevant autism-related interventions (Maenner et al., 2020; West et al., 2016). Intersectionality is the study of the overlapping discrimination produced by systems of oppression (Collins, 2019; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and allows the researcher to simultaneously address race and disability in special education (Artiles, 2013). In this scoping review, the authors used the PRISMA-ScR checklist (Tricco et al., 2018) and Arskey and O’Malley’s (2005) framework to investigate the degree to which autism-related research (ARR) has included the intersectional experiences of BAWG. Utilizing narrative synthesis, strengths and gaps across the current body of literature are identified in order to set new directions for intersectional ARR. Overall, the authors found that across a 77-year period, three studies foregrounded BAWG and none addressed intersectionality as measured through criteria advanced by García and Ortiz (2013). These results reveal the scholarly neglect BAWG face in ARR, discourse, policy, and practice. A future agenda including research, practice, and policy priorities is identified and discussed.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2022 · doi:10.1007/s40617-021-00654-9