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Boys are three times more likely to be timely diagnosed with autism than girls.
Autism is a condition increasingly in public awareness, but much about it remains to be known and studied. In previous articles, we have talked about neurodiversity, the cognitive differences in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), their life experiences, the need for schools to stay up to date in treating neurodivergent students, and new tools to support their learning. According to an article in The Conversation, this developmental disability occurs in approximately one in 70 people. In childhood, male children have three times more chance of being diagnosed than girls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who usually are diagnosed later and miss the opportunity for early treatment. The lack of a timely opinion negatively impacts girls’ cognitive and social development.
Undiagnosed children with autism suffer disadvantages such as confusion in social situations, difficulty bonding with peers, and processing frustration. They do not have the tools to understand why they are more sensitive to some stimuli like noises, lights, or crowds. This can lead to adverse experiences that generate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that continue into adulthood.
Why is it harder to diagnose girls?
To prevent the arrival of problems related to PTSD, the diagnosis and treatment of autism are essential. Being more difficult to detect autism in girls is not a matter of discrimination. The differences in symptomatology complicate its discovery in girls compared to boys.
Boys with autism have more noticeably repetitive and limited play, while girls have fewer repetitive patterns and are more varied in their activities. As Lisa Jo Rudy, advocate, author, and consultant specializing in autism, explains for Verywell Health, girls on the spectrum may respond better than boys to nonverbal communication. The lack of communication and social skills is a primary indicator of a possible case of autism, but girls tend to mask this inability better. In addition, boys’ communication and socialization problems are most evident in childhood. Girls, in many cases, can meet the social demands of this stage and do not encounter the difficulties of integration caused by autism until puberty and early adolescence. Some studies suggest that girls with autism are more prone to suffer anxiety and depression than boys. This consequence could be reduced after a diagnosis.
A path to improvement
Just 20 hours after being diagnosed, 139 women spoke to the newspaper The Guardian about their experiences. They called the medical diagnosis a kind of rebirth. One that comes with new challenges. Before having more awareness about the spectrum of autism and the different ways it affects women, many could reach 40 to 70 years before their condition was identified. “Being told that there isn’t something inherently wrong with you and your brain is just wired differently is life-affirming,” Sophie Meredith, 31, told The Guardian. Such news can indeed open a process for improvement, but it depends on the resources granted to treat autism after the diagnosis. The finding is not an end to the story; on the contrary, it is the beginning.
What is required to ensure the well-being of women with autism? As the first steps, it is necessary to improve the diagnostic parameters, expand the search criteria with specific indicators of autism in women, including autistic women as test designers, offer multidisciplinary psychological and medical attention, as well as diligently monitor the close connection between female autism, depression, and anxiety. Above all, we cannot fall into the prejudice that if a woman does not look autistic, she cannot be on the spectrum. Even if autistic symptoms among women are not as noticeable, they face enormous challenges to deal with them and integrate socially. It is time to give them better tools.
Translation by Daniel Wetta
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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