Autism and Asperger syndrome underdiagnosed in women

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Well sensory aversions are not a diagnostic criteria item (I personally believe everyone with an ASD probably has some kind of sensory anomally, but that this does not necessarily take the form of an aversion and is not necessarily detectable to all effected persons).

So far as I can recall off the top of my head, the criteria sub-set that refers to routines includes three items and only one item of the three needs to be present for the sub-set to be met (so yes, it is possible to meet the criteria without routines).

Interesting. I should probably look into this more. I had always assumed after my ADHD diagnosis that I had some really aberrant kind of ADHD (because I'm meticulous in my work and compulsively punctual).

And the Straterra really did help with my being able to block out noise during classes and also helped me follow conversations and not get sidetracked when doing stuff I don't enjoy.

So, dumb question -- would a sensory anomaly include a ridiculously high pain threshold?

I enjoy extremely (like, PAINFULLY) spicy foods and it also takes a lot of pain for me to flinch. My dad didn't me believe I'd broken my arm when I was young, because I told him very calmly after being thrown off my bike that I needed to go to the hospital because my arm was broken. He wouldn't take me until Mom pointed out that I was white as a sheet, even though I told him that I felt and heard it snap. But I hadn't read of this being consistent with ASD (or anything else, for that matter). If that's a sensory anomaly, I think I know where my kiddo got his AS.

Does anyone know why exactly women tend to be better at masking their symptoms? I'd love to know.

I believe a number of factors are involved.
Females as a rule, apparently tend to develop faster in areas particularly effected by ASDs. If someone fails to take this into account and compares a female in one of these areas to the general population or a male with AS, then the measurement is gender-biased and fails to take into account the need to make such comparisons between comparible people. We would not compare a 4 year old to 6 year olds to determine if they are developmentally matched to their peers, and since gender does correlate with a number of differnences in areas relevant to ASDs we need to compare a female to her gender matched age-peers to determine if she is developing comparibly with her peers in any area where there is reason to suspect or expect gender based differences.

It may be that females (be it due to innate qualities or the way society treats people according to gender, or an admixture of these things) expend more effort attempting to "fit in" and adapt.

It does seem that there might be some gender based influence on responses (be these the result of innate differences or the result of society treating people differently on the basis of gender expectations) to frustrations and impairments associated with ASDs, with boys apparently being more likely to respond in a disruptive manner that gets attention and strongly motivates attempts to find out what is going on, whereas females may be more inclined to respond in ways that do not get such attention and that might even be considered "desirable" from the point of view of adult care givers (for instance being quiet and cooperative and stringently following rules while becomming increasingly withdrawn is less likely to generate a decisive response than being loud and physically disruptive in class). Even when boys respond this way, it is still more likely to "stand out" as there is a societal expectation that boys behave a certain way and a different set of expectations for girls. So when a girl becomes withdrawn it may just be seen as her being "a quiet girl" but when a boy becomes withdrawn this might "ring"
more "alarm bells" in the minds of observers.

The criteria and most literature has been formed around males and their traits. There is reason to suspect that gender may influence a number of these things, (such as the content of special interests) so that making assumptions about likely content of such interests on the basis of reports predominately or exclusively about males, skews assumptions about the content of special interests so that the kinds of interests more likely to occur in respect of females are often dismissed (as possible ASD related interests) out of hand due to not meeting expectations and assumptions about content.