#outdated tools

I found an interesting study on females with autism and how tools are more male-based tools. According to this study:

An Australian-first study from Flinders University has found women and girls are harder to diagnose with autism than boys, because diagnostic tools are skewed towards detecting autistic boys and men.

The researchers found autistic girls and women often mask their traits and are not being diagnosed until later in life, if at all, meaning they miss out on important supports.

"The tools we currently use are not well-equipped to diagnose autism in females and we need to go back to the drawing board to work out how girls with autism present and how different they might be from ... boys," Professor Robyn Young said.

"If we've got a stereotypical view of what autism looks like and a female comes in with really good social scripts, good eye contact, engaged in pretend play, their obsessive interest is Harry Styles, they might not appear to be so different from any other female."

"Boys will often externalise their behaviours and become more obvious in the classroom, acting out and having meltdowns.

"Girls are more inclined to camouflage ... and as a result they don't come to the attention of professionals until much later."

The full article will be below for anyone who wants to read it.