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Why females often get diagnosed later in life

Alien0n3arth

I watched today a video (in german) by Tom Harrendorf,  a youtuber, who himself is a diagnosed (formally) autistic and he works in the area of autism 15 years and is also a leader of a local support group. 

He brings various studies in his videos. Today I watched a video from him, where he put together (according to the study) - reasons, why women so often get diagnosed later in life. It turns out, that it's not masking, at least not to high degree - the reason why it happens. 

Girls and women are naturally more social than men. It applies to both, allistic women and men, and autistic women and men. So if the diagnostic setting involves one diagnostician and one autistic woman, the diagnostician alone may not be able to catch the difficulties, the woman has. So then she might be false diagnosed as not autistic,  because she is able to have a conversation with the diagnotician. So as Tom Harrendorf says, in order to be able to pick up on an autistic high functioning female, her social difficulties,  tgere should be more, than one person in the setting and then it would be visible, how much that autistic woman struggles to stay on track.

He also mentioned the bias, although the symptoms between males and females are similar, there are still more men diagnosed. Not sure if autism truly affects men more often than women, or girls and women just go undetected for years. Or entire lifes. An autistic girl is more likely to be labeled shy, lazy etc. I was labeled shy, obsessive and stubborn. Tge author also says, that "masking" in autism is actually very doubtful and hard to perform. Why? It's because of the nature of autism- difficulties reading social, non verbal cues, facial expressions,  difficulties understanding anything ambiguous etc. So I relate to it - I'm mostly unaware or very little aware of my body, my stimming, that's why I can't just stop it, so it happens,  that someone changes their seat when they see my weird movements with my hands. Also when it comes to my behaviour and interests, I may try to modify it only when someone tells me directly,  what I should change and that they find it weird or wrong (whatever about me). Otherwise I just don't know it. I always wanted to be like others, but had no idea how to do it. I still can't practically do it, but this man's videos help me understand how autistic minds differ from allistic minds. I don't have a formal diagnosis,  I can only say I relate a lot to the autistic experience. 

Here is the link to the video:

https://youtu.be/mkJ0vl0YjT4?si=R7nmCUeZmIp2Lz1P

I'm curious of any thoughts and experiences in this topic.

At tge end of the video Tom asks if ladies on tge spectrum or with suspected autism fear or feared being not taken seriously and not recognised because of masking. He also mentioned,  that women are more likely to get other diagnoses. Also my case- depression and tourette in the past. Tourette turned out to be false.

Parents
  • in reply to Bunny

    Thank you for sharing the link, the "extreme male brain theory" got my attention. I was told multiple times by female peers, including my step sister, that im like a boy. There was also a colleague at work who told me the same thing. I was kind of a bit amazed, but on other hand I feel it my whole life, that im profoundly different. I also hear that the brain of autistic female works somehow like a brain of non-autistic male. Which makes somehow sense to me.

    I work in a male team, I'm.the only female there and I hear from my colleagues that im absolutely different than other women and they like working with me. Do maybe it also contributes to the 'late diagnosis' - autistic males find less environments where they can somehow fit in, than us females. I don't fit in with the female peer group,  but I can much better fit in with a male peer group. In my workplace the male colleagues make small talk and gossip more or less same as females, but the big difference for me is that they don't ask me "what's wrong with me" why I don't do small talk. They say I'm very quiet and bring peace and I'm organised and my hyperfocus on the task let me do it quickly. 

    Tom Harrendorf brought up once a study, that claimed the autistic phenotype is actually more prevalent in females than males, but because of the social roles and expectations, the autistic symptoms are more problematic and recognisable in males.

Reply
  • in reply to Bunny

    Thank you for sharing the link, the "extreme male brain theory" got my attention. I was told multiple times by female peers, including my step sister, that im like a boy. There was also a colleague at work who told me the same thing. I was kind of a bit amazed, but on other hand I feel it my whole life, that im profoundly different. I also hear that the brain of autistic female works somehow like a brain of non-autistic male. Which makes somehow sense to me.

    I work in a male team, I'm.the only female there and I hear from my colleagues that im absolutely different than other women and they like working with me. Do maybe it also contributes to the 'late diagnosis' - autistic males find less environments where they can somehow fit in, than us females. I don't fit in with the female peer group,  but I can much better fit in with a male peer group. In my workplace the male colleagues make small talk and gossip more or less same as females, but the big difference for me is that they don't ask me "what's wrong with me" why I don't do small talk. They say I'm very quiet and bring peace and I'm organised and my hyperfocus on the task let me do it quickly. 

    Tom Harrendorf brought up once a study, that claimed the autistic phenotype is actually more prevalent in females than males, but because of the social roles and expectations, the autistic symptoms are more problematic and recognisable in males.

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