For decades, the vast majority of members of the scientific community thought and affirmed that autism was a mainly male affection. This explains why the almost integrality of the chosen models to work on what is also called autistic spectrum disorder (TSA) were male, today explains New Scientist, which notes that science is finally in the process of returning to its error.
The error in question will have been detrimental to a large number of women and girls, whose TSA will simply not have been diagnosed because of their gender. We can hope that this period of medical blindness will soon be over, since researchers have finally worked on the behavior of female brains (in the social sense of the term) affected by autism. But getting rid of such a huge bias will probably not be easy.
It is in particular in Hans Asperger, one of the “fathers of autism”, that we owe the belief that autism is a male disease. This often referred to a form of extreme intelligence characterizing boys and which it connected to several characteristics of autism. In the 1960s, the most famous studies reported a ratio of four men affected for a single woman. The figure has hard skin: it still continues to be cited today on many websites, in advice manuals and in research items.
Under the radar
Direct consequence of the vast relay of this figure: girls diagnosed as autistic are still few. In the 1980s, in the United States, there were about fifteen times more diagnosed than women. The general consensus was that there were of course autistic girls and women, but that their social difficulties and their repetitive behaviors were less marked. Certain cultural archetypes, such as the character played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain manonly strengthened the idea of a mainly male autism.
An analysis carried out on more than 120 brain imaging studies specifically on autism recently revealed that almost 70% of the work undertaken had only been carried out on male brains. Of more than 4,000 participants and participants in this research, less than 10% were women. Another study, dating from 2020, showed that teachers placed in front of children with atypical behavior were more likely to suggest that they were autistic if they had a male first name (Jack) rather than a female name (Chloé). In short, the bias is total.
As a result, almost 80% of autistic girls are still not diagnosed at the age of 18. The consequences on their studies and careers can be gigantic. To try to remedy it, a large number of them use more or less conscious strategies known as “masking” or “camouflage”: in summary, they make much more effort (sometimes superhuman) than their male counterparts to adapt to non -autistic people who surround them, in order to integrate socially.
A new era seems to open up: little by little, women wishing to be diagnosed should be subject to more suitable interrogations. Adjustments to the diagnostic criteria initially posed for men should be implemented, and studies on TSA should be more and more balanced in terms of representativeness. What revolutionize the condition of many autistic girls and women, but also revolutionizing the general understanding of this disease.
