Strong Female Character

In recent years, it has become widely understood that women and girls with autism are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed at a disproportionate rate compared to their male counterparts. Gael Orsmond, a Boston University professor who specializes in research on the social relationships of young people with autism, asserts that autism is diagnosed “three to four times more often in boys than girls,” despite the criteria for the condition being the same across genders (“Why Do So Many Autistic Girls Go Undiagnosed?” BU Today). Many factors have contributed to this gender imbalance. Historically, the medical field has considered autism to be a predominantly male condition, operating under the assumption that women are simply less likely to have autism. However, this understanding was based largely upon early studies that relied on data exclusively from male subjects, creating a large gender bias in psychologists’ foundational image of autism.

More recently proposed hypotheses about the cause of underdiagnosis for women include the idea that women are more likely to engage in effective masking behaviors, either naturally or because of social conditioning. Sharada Krishnan, a student of Orsmond, says, “It could be partly a societal expectation of women.