Thousands of GIRLS may have undiagnosed autism because they

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It's not a mystery, I've found and linked research that discusses this in the past, and I think anbuend did before that. I also believe the ratio was not 4:1, but closer to even. I don't recall how much closer, however.

I need to dig it up again.

I'm still willing to lend credence to the biological explanations behind why Autism Spectrum Disorders seem to be predominant in males. But I think the relatively minimal knowledge of how ASDs manifest in females is something which needs to be address and could be another factor in why more males are diagnosed than females (4:1 as the statistics suggest).

FWIW, AS was maybe half of my mother's quirks, and I think being female just gave her more privileges to avoid close scrutiny, and less opportunity to follow her weird.

That bolded bit is something that basically never happens.

But being a girl and a woman probably had an impact on how her behavior was interpreted.

OK, just one example. She couldn't get drafted. I could fill a book, and hope to.

Two days ago, I was running a xmas card making session for little rainbows - our local charity for autistic kids. And was actually pleasantly surprised - the numbers of girls vs boys was almost equal! I don't think I have ever seen that happen before, it is usually about 2 boys per girl.

Having had time to observe them all together, the autistic traits in the girls definitely seemed a lot less obvious. They just seemed like slightly geeky but otherwise normal little girls. I think it's partly because the same behaviours in a boy stand out more as being untypical boy behaviour, whereas those behaviours in a girl don't break the mould as much. But I'm no expert so that is just my personal observations.

I'm definitely growing more convinced that my daughter is ASD now, over the last week both her grandmother and her childminder have commented on her ASD like traits. I'm going back to the doctors tomorrow to push things ahead a bit more.

It makes me angry that we have been saying for years that there was something not quite right about her, but it took till she was nine years old for anyone to take us seriously - and then only because her brother and myself got diagnosed, so there is a genetic probability involved now.

I'm female-to-male transsexual so I can tell out of own experience how psychiatrists treat girls who don't follow social roules and how they treat boys...

When I was a "girl" and had to do with psychiatrists I had very often huge difficulties to understand what's going on, because psychiatrists seemed to love to talk to me in several different douple meanings.
Also they kept looking for disorders that are more common in girls...

Then after my sex change psychiatrists started to treat me entirely different (eventhough they knew that I'm transsexual). The way they talked to me was much more straighforward and also it was very easy to explain to them my social difficulties, befor they were looking for some strange abstract meaning that just wasn't there.

So it also has to do A LOT with psychiatrists and their clichées about girls and boys with mental problems...!

Now that is fascinating to hear

I'm a girl, and I was diagnosed fairly early at the age of five, although Mom knew straight away. The DSM-IV had just come out right before I was born, (I think that's what she told me, anyway...) and I showed all the "classic" symptoms from the start; watching ceiling fans, not making eye contact, spinning, lining my toys up in a row, etc. Mom kept trying to get a diagnosis for me, but all she got was "willful baby," "overly-anxious mother" and one nurse warned her that they were going to bring up the possibility of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome if she kept it up. She took me to several different doctors for testing after that, and FINALLY got me a dual diagnosis of HFA/AS.

I still fly under the radar to a lot of people, though. If they saw what I was on the inside, maybe they'd go "Oh!" and realize that I'm not as similar to them as they think I am. But why would I want to be? Autism is a great excuse to collect Ebola viruses! (And mine are just plain snuggly, too! )

I think we'll see a generational divide between women diagnosed with AS who are younger than ~25 and those over--mainly that those over that age will have been diagnosed later in life due to AS not being recognized until recently as a disorder that effects women (or, depending on what your age is, that exists.)

I'd be interested in seeing how many of us over 25 were diagnosed with ADHD or ADD, or some other co-morbid psychiatric disorder. I'm going to guess that many of us were, just as a way of compensating for our 'odd' behaviors. My list of false diagnoses is as long as my arm, all of which were at best a very partial fit (and like many, I suspect, I carried a diagnosis of ADHD.)

I'm going to tend to agree that AS behaviors are seen as more acceptable for women, but that doesn't signal that women have it easier. I personally got nine kinds of crap kicked out of me for what were seen as 'masculine' behaviors (the asking socially unacceptable questions, aggressive behaviors, inability to understand personal boundaries, etc), and the acceptable 'feminine' behaviors (like social withdrawal, obsession with trying to figure out how people worked, bookishness, high marks at school, obedience to teachers--because they had interesting information, quietness, etc) were at best a mixed bag of success and serious, abject failures. I didn't bother to make friends most of my life because I just couldn't figure out how to do it. As a result, I've been incredibly lonely.

I can't hide my problems very well, and the fact that I was being beaten for not properly gender conforming at home made it even harder to try to 'get along' with others at school.

It's rather stupid and overly simplistic to claim that women somehow have it easier because some AS symptoms are more acceptable for them.

I read that that isn't quite true for one reason: it's that the 4:1 ratio exists within Autistic Disorder, but within those diagnosed with it the girls are significantly more likely to be lower functioning than the boys. When you stratify it along intellectual disability a ration of around 5.5:1 was found for without intellectual disability, and 2:1 for with intellectual disability. One interpretation of this is girls only get diagnosed if they are more disabled.

Nobody in the US has been drafted for the past 40 years. The reasons that women were not considered suitable for conscription were generally misogynist (viewing women as weak or fragile or too emotional etc. for combat). Despite the general attitude that women should not serve in combat, many women have served in combat, and have been killed or experienced disabling injuries, right alongside men.

Never mind this started because you mischaracterized the fact that women have a harder time being diagnosed with autism as a "privilege."

Thank you. This is something I have read as well.

I could tell from a very early age that I was different and I took great pains to appear like an NT girl. However it was obvious anyway that I was not. People just know. When I was young they knew because I was overly well-behaved, which I have read is a common female symptom. I had a great deal of school stress because I was so careful to do everything right so that I wouldn't get detected. It still stressed me out for years after I got out of school and I still have nightmares about school even though nothing outwardly traumatic was going on. For me getting through school was a very long and difficult process.

I thought it was interesting that when I took the RAADS test I scored higher in all categories than diagnosed males but lower in all categories than diagnosed females. What this tells me is that females have to have very extreme symptoms to get noticed or be aware that they might be autistic and I think it's because there isn't enough awareness in society about females with autism and how females exhibit autism. Women who would be getting lower scores but still high enough to pass as autistic are missing from the statistics.

Autistic boys usually get picked-on and targeted by their peers worse than autistic girls. And if a child gets bullied it's usually the determining factor in whether or not they "fit in" while at school. This makes the boys stand-out more than girls for a potential evaluation/diagnosis.

Venger: I got in many fights (fist fights, not just hair pulling) with boys, got taunted and/or made fun of by other girls (who picked up on my sexual orientation), pushed down stairs or held underwater in the pool by boys, in addition to sexual harassment by boys when I hit puberty. All of this, of course, while being snubbed by girls who thought I was 'weird' and made fun of for being too 'bookish' or thinking I was smart.

And then there was being pulled out of class and screamed at by teachers who thought I was not paying enough attention, or fidgeted too much, or asked too many questions.

Let's not even talk about gym, shall we? It was f*****g awful.

At least anecdotally speaking, your assertion is false.