It may be that the gender difference is magnifying any social/communication issues that are already there because of being ND. I know I’ve always found it harder to make myself feel understood by women compared to men, and I’m also autistic.

I’ve observed that both genders have different communication styles they expect to use, both with the same gender and with the opposite, and these are all the sort of dreaded unwritten social rules that we tend to struggle with as NDs. So a man tends to expect to conduct himself a different way with another man versus with a woman, and a woman expects to conduct herself a different way with other women than with men. The difference is subtle and mostly subconscious from what I can tell. Most people don’t realize they are doing it, but NDs are often paying attention to different things than what NTs are in terms of body language, word choice, social cues, etc., so we pick up on it more, even though we don’t always understand it.