The first installment on my visual “take” on Diagnosing/Recognising High Functioning Autism in Adult Females: Challenging Stereotypes
The Nexus of Gender, Age and Ability
Since its original conception in the 1940’s autism has been dominated by a focus on males. Indeed, epidemiological data has consistently highlighted a greater prevalence among males than females, with diagnosis four times more common in males [6–8].
This has led to the notion that Autism is a male disorder, popularised in the “extreme male brain” hypothesis of autism underpinned by the systemiser-empathizer dichotomy [9]. However, since the 1980s, the gender bias in autism has been steadily gaining traction [10,11]. Indeed, Attwood [12] contends that “life on the autism spectrum is not easy for girls and women”, who often adjust to the classic profile of autism characteristics differently to males, resulting in a disparate presentation of the condition.
Read the full paper: Diagnosing/Recognising High Functioning Autism in Adult Females: Challenging Stereotypes
Citation: Evans-Williams CVM (2016) Diagnosing/Recognising High Functioning Autism in Adult Females: Challenging Stereotypes. Autism Open Access 6:179. doi:10.4172/2165-7890.1000179
Copyright: © 2016 Evans-Williams CVM. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Pingback: Our “obstinately persisting misunderstanding” of #autism – Under Your Radar