Autistische Mädchen werden viel seltener diagnostiziert. Laut einer groß angelegten Studie ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, an Autismus zu erkranken, bei Frauen möglicherweise genauso wahrscheinlich wie bei Männern, aber bei Jungen ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass sie bereits im Kindesalter diagnostiziert werden, bis zu viermal höher. Im Alter von 20 Jahren sind die Diagnoseraten bei Männern und Frauen nahezu gleich, was die Annahme einer geschlechtsspezifischen Diskrepanz in Frage stellt.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/04/autism-women-men-diagnosis-childhood-adulthood
4 Kommentare
**Autistic girls much less likely to be diagnosed**, study says
**By age 20 diagnosis rates for men and women almost equal, research finds, challenging assumptions of gender discrepancy**
**Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study**.
Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Sweden between 1985 and 2020. Of the 2.7 million people tracked, 2.8% were diagnosed with autism between the ages of two and 37.
They found that by the age of 20, diagnosis rates of men and women were almost equal, challenging previous assumptions that autism is more common among males.
“Our findings suggest that the gender difference in autism prevalence is much lower than previously thought, due to women and girls being underdiagnosed or diagnosed late,” said the lead author, Dr Caroline Fyfe.
The research calculated that in childhood, boys were diagnosed on average nearly three years earlier than girls – the median age at diagnosis was 15.9 for girls, but 13.1 for boys. Overall, boys were three to four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism under the age of 10, although girls were found to “catch up” by the time they were 20, owing to a rapid increase in autism diagnosis during adolescence.
“These observations highlight the need to investigate why female individuals receive diagnoses later than male individuals,” the authors conclude.
The study, published in the BMJ, also found that while gender disparities in diagnosis rates remained pretty consistent over the last three decades for children under 10, they decreased rapidly for all other age groups.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-084164
Good they’re catching up on this. It’s about time.
Girls don’t let other girls know to their face they think each other weird and so it takes them until late adolescence/early adulthood to piece it together. guess ‚politeness‘ has its limits.
I did my own „research“ or more so observation and it basically boils down to, IMO, behavioral differences.
In school, for the longest time, it was expected boys to be calm, relaxed and focus, where biologically, it simply isnt the norm so to speak, compared to girls. Boys like to be very active, peacocking from an early age, being rebelious and having issues at school, thus more frequently checked for neurodivergent traits. With that said, because of this, A LOT are undiagnosed, because of their neurodivergence making them calm, more focused, help them zone out and seemingly looking well adjusted, despite being well on the spectrum.
Meanwhile, girls are naturally more calm, thus making them difficult to spot. Also being on the spectrum, they are more prone to expressing traits of being on the spectrum, such as anxiety or depression, but they are treated as something completely unrelated to them being on the spectrum.
These days, I have a very easy time befriending somebody on the spectrum, even if they are undiagnosed. Guys being about as expected, kinda clear cut, but women fall so far under the radar, until you really get to know them. Guys are mostly unaware, but most women I meet actually had been treated for anxiety and/or depression, which was simply misdiagnosed.
My 2 cents