Beyond Awareness: Why the Next Era of Neurodiversity Work Must Be About Justice
Bridgette Hamstead
For more than a decade, the word “awareness” has dominated the conversation around neurodiversity. Campaigns, corporate initiatives, and public service announcements have framed it as the goal, to make people “aware” that autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other forms of neurodivergence exist. The idea was that awareness would lead to understanding, and understanding would lead to change. But it hasn’t. Awareness has plateaued into something performative, an endless cycle of branding, symbolism, and shallow gestures that rarely shift power or policy. We are now living in an era where awareness is easy and justice is rare. The next evolution of this movement must move beyond recognition to redistribution.
Awareness asks people to notice that difference exists. Acceptance asks them to tolerate it. Justice asks what needs to change so that difference can thrive. Awareness campaigns have made neurodiversity visible, but visibility alone does not guarantee safety. It does not address the structural conditions that disable, exclude, and exploit neurodivergent people. A society can know that we exist and still design schools, workplaces, and healthcare systems that punish our ways of being. Awareness has become the floor, not the ceiling, of what progress should mean.
The problem with awareness is that it centers the observer, not the observed. It asks neurotypical people to learn about neurodivergent lives without necessarily relinquishing power over how those lives are defined or governed. It allows people to feel compassionate without becoming accountable. Many awareness campaigns still traffic in pity, pathology, or inspiration, casting neurodivergent people as either suffering or superhuman, never as complex human beings. Awareness becomes another form of control when it dictates which stories are acceptable to tell and which emotions are permissible to express.
Justice changes the conversation entirely.
It shifts the focus from individual empathy to collective responsibility. It asks why so many systems are built to reward conformity and punish divergence. It demands that institutions reallocate resources, redesign environments, and redistribute authority so that neurodivergent people can lead the changes that affect our lives. Justice is not a poster, a ribbon, or a marketing campaign, it is a structural transformation that begins with who holds decision-making power.
This shift matters because representation without redistribution is tokenism. Having a neurodivergent employee, speaker, or panelist means little if the system still operates on ableist assumptions. Justice means not just including neurodivergent people in conversations about diversity but recognizing that our perspectives often challenge the foundations of those systems. We are not asking for awareness of our presence; we are asking for a reckoning with the ways power has been distributed. We are asking to redefine what intelligence, communication, and productivity even mean.
Awareness tends to focus on diagnosis, labeling, and accommodation. Justice focuses on design, equity, and agency. Awareness says, “Here’s what autism looks like.” Justice asks, “What structures create barriers for autistic people, and who benefits from keeping them in place?” Awareness seeks to humanize; justice seeks to equalize. The difference is subtle but profound. One asks for empathy, the other demands change.
In the era of awareness, neurodivergent people have been studied, spoken about, and managed. In the era of justice, we become authors, architects, and decision-makers. Awareness exists within the status quo; justice questions the status quo itself. It calls for reform at every level, from education to employment, from research to representation. It demands that policymakers consult neurodivergent-led organizations rather than rely on parent or charity groups that speak over us. It requires that employers value regulation and authenticity as much as productivity. It insists that healthcare shift from treatment to partnership, where lived experience holds as much authority as clinical expertise.
Justice also asks for a different pace. Awareness campaigns move quickly, they trend, they rebrand, they fade. Justice work moves slowly and intentionally. It is relational, embodied, and iterative. It requires trust, consent, and collaboration. It means asking hard questions about who gets resourced, who gets heard, and who gets to define the future of this movement. Justice cannot be outsourced to marketing teams or consultants who replicate the very hierarchies we are trying to dismantle. It must be led by neurodivergent people, informed by intersectionality, and rooted in lived experience.
Awareness often begins with storytelling, teaching others what it’s like to live inside a neurodivergent mind. Justice continues that storytelling but changes the audience. Instead of asking the public to empathize, it asks institutions to repair. Instead of telling the world what it’s like to be us, we tell each other what it will take to be free. Our stories become strategy. Our survival becomes theory.
The next era of neurodiversity work must also reckon with intersectionality. Justice cannot exist without understanding how racism, classism, misogyny, queerphobia, and colonialism shape who gets diagnosed, who gets believed, and who gets supported. Awareness without intersectionality often amplifies privilege, it highlights certain kinds of neurodivergent people while ignoring others. Justice insists that the movement be led by those most affected, not just those most palatable to the mainstream. It asks us to confront uncomfortable truths about whose stories have been centered and whose have been erased.
If awareness was the introduction, justice is the curriculum. It is the work of learning and unlearning together, of rebuilding systems around regulation, rest, and reciprocity. It invites us to imagine new definitions of success, ones that measure well-being rather than output, connection rather than compliance. It reminds us that awareness might change perception, but only justice changes lives.
Awareness will always be the first step, but it cannot be the last. We no longer need the world to simply know that we exist. We need it to change because we do. Justice means moving from sympathy to solidarity, from token presence to shared power, from education to transformation. The next chapter of this movement will not be written by awareness campaigns. It will be written by communities willing to rebuild the world at the pace of care, regulation, and collective repair.
Reflection Questions: Beyond Awareness – Why the Next Era of Neurodiversity Work Must Be About Justice
When I talk about “awareness,” whose comfort am I protecting? Does awareness make change, or does it make people feel absolved from needing to?
How do I know when a conversation about inclusion is centering empathy instead of accountability?
Who benefits from awareness campaigns that stop at visibility without addressing power?
What forms of awareness have I participated in that might have unintentionally reinforced stereotypes or hierarchies of worth?
What would it mean to move from educating others about neurodivergence to redistributing decision-making power to neurodivergent people themselves?
Where in my community or organization is “representation” being used as a substitute for justice?
What does redistribution look like in my sphere of influence, resources, pay, time, authorship, or authority?
How might I measure the difference between being seen and being safe?
What does it mean for me to engage in solidarity rather than allyship? How does that change what I do, not just what I believe?
In what ways does my workplace, classroom, or community still treat awareness as a one-time event instead of an ongoing practice of redesign?
Whose voices have been centered in the neurodiversity movement, and who has been consistently left out?
How do privilege, race, gender, and class shape who gets diagnosed, who gets believed, and who gets funded?
What parts of my own worldview resist change when justice asks for redistribution instead of recognition?
What would happen if awareness months were replaced with long-term policy, access, and leadership commitments?
How can storytelling evolve from awareness to strategy, from “this is what it’s like” to “this is what needs to change”?
What does accountability look like when the people most affected by injustice are leading the process of repair?
What systems in my life are built around compliance and performance instead of regulation and care?
What is one concrete way I can shift from awareness to action this month, in policy, design, education, or funding?
How do I know when my work or advocacy has stopped at awareness, and what would moving toward justice actually require of me?
What would a culture of neurodiversity justice feel like in my body, my relationships, and my community?