Key signs of autism in women - and why girls slide so often through cracks

Autism has never been so much discussed, as it was in 2025. The diagnosis is increasing, due to a large part of an increased awareness, and numerous celebrities have shared the experience with the affection.

But even now, half of the world’s population is still overlooked when it comes to understanding the symptoms and the diagnostic rate. Gender damage in medicine means that much of the general understanding of autism is inclined towards its presentation in men, which causes many women with autism to fly under the radar.

“For too long, autism has been predominantly understood by a lens centered on men, with stereotypes and diagnostic criteria formed by the way they usually appear in boys,” says Leanne Cooper-Brow, neurodezzar to clinical partners. “As a result, many women, girls and non-binary people in the autism spectrum remain undiagnosed or are diagnosed much later, often lacking in vital support. This subdiagnosis leaves many without the necessary support, affecting their mental health, education and employment opportunities.”

Recent studies shed light on this disappearance, with 2023 research showing that, while 1.22 percent of Men in England were diagnosed with autism, only 0.35 percent of women received a diagnosis.

Autism is presented differently in women and girls, which is part of the reason why it is underdiagnosed. But to understand how it is different, you must first understand how more general autism is presented.

How to show autism in both sexes

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“The first key (autistic feature) is the differences in the way someone communicates and behaves in social relations,” explains Dr. Rachel Moley, the main academic in psychology at Bournemouth University, which is itself autistic. “Both in terms of their verbal behavior – it can use language in a slightly different way, maybe their language is a little old, maybe they are struggling with pragmatic aspects of language, such as understanding jokes – but then you will have some people who do not really use the spoken language.

Then there are differences in nonverbal behavior. “The use of eye contact, the use of gesture. They show emotions in their voices? They express emotions in their faces? Maybe their emotions and gestures are more alive. Then there may be differences in what we call social imagination, which is your ability to understand and recognize the mental states of other people, so what they might feel, think, think,

Dr. Mosley also notices that autistic people can have a “preference for similarity” and very intense interests: “Instead of having small hobbies in which we deal, we would develop an encyclopedic knowledge on certain topics,” she says.

How to show autism in girls

Dr. Mosley says it can be harder to observe autistic girls than to observe autistic boys, because girls of all levels of neurodiversity tend to have better outer socialization habits than boys. “You tend to see that non-autistic girls are the most socially skilled,” she explains. “Then you see that the autistic girls and non-guys come around the same level, so they are a comparable kind of their external social behavior. And then you see that autistic boys are considerably worse. So it is a way in which the autistic girls tend to be in the middle of the non-guys. obtained in terms of boys who are down.

This often means that autistic girls are seen on the edge of social groups or “weaving and outside the edges of friendship groups”, but less likely to be ostracized in the way they are autistic boys.

Special interests of autistic girls also tend to be more socially acceptable than those from autistic boys. “You have more chances to see interests that are socially linked. Maybe their interests are in other people, or TV or celebrities, or perhaps in activism, all things that have a social, relational nature.

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“With the boys, you have more chances to see interests that are age and sex, like a boy who is interested in baked bean cans. While, with a little girl, you have more chances to see an appropriate interest and genre, but it is unusual in its intensity.”

So, while an autistic boy could be interested in ripe bean trains and cans, a girl could be dedicated entirely to Taylor Swift or fighting the climatic crisis.

This is part of masking, an autistic feature that is much more common in women and autistic girls than men and autistic boys. “Many (women and girls with autism) develop coping strategies, such as masking, where they imitate social behaviors to fit, which can make their struggles less visible,” explains Cooper-Brown. “In addition, features such as sensory sensitivities or difficulties with eye contact, commonly recognized in men, are sometimes suppressed or overlooked in women (…) Masking can lead to exhaustion, anxiety and burning, contributing to the mental health challenges that many autistic women face.”

How to show autism in women

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“Adult women have learned a lot of strategies to compensate for their differences and difficulties to fly under the radar,” says Dr. Mosley. “For autistic women, you will continue to see these basic difficulties in social understanding – such as the struggle with the office banter, which struggles to read the information encoded in E -mails, default suggestions, which are struggling to connect with people to work.

“You could be painfully timid and you could work very, very difficult to hide all this. You could have sensory differences, so you could be very difficult to adjust things, you could be overwhelmed with all sound and light and so on. to cope with them.

Masking continues in the older life, confirms Dr. Mosley. “We often hear that many autistic women are, as a form of masking, quite passive. They are pleasant people. They are desperate to be pleasant to be accepted and not victimized. These are all common profiles of autistic women, but more importantly, not all autistic women.

Signs of autism in adult women

According to NHS:

Autistic women may have more chances:

They learned to hide the signs of autism to “fall” – copying people who have no autism
Be more peaceful and hide the feelings
seem to cope better with social situations
shows fewer signs of repetitive behaviors

“This was the predominant vision of autism that it was, you know, the more classic stereotyped presentation, the kind of rain image and this is not often what we see in girls and women.”

As a result, the only women and girls who were recognized as autistic by researchers and psychologists were women and girls who had classic male features of autism, strengthening the stereotype. Only in 2013, masking, a key feature in autism among women and girls, was added to the DSM-5 (the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental diseases).

“There was a historical failure in the ministry of people distributed at birth, people with subtle presentation presentations,” says Dr. Moley. “They have been underestimated for so long and we know that they are there. Now we finally get to a place where we are better to recognize them.”