It is time to close the autism diagnosis gender gap

If you are having a heart attack, you had better hope you are a man. Women are 50 per cent more likely than men to be misdiagnosed when having a heart attack. The main reason? Stereotypes: we tend to think of heart attacks as a “man thing”.

Autism, too, has long been seen as a condition predominantly affecting men. As with heart attacks, this perception is widely held by the public and often portrayed in cultural characterisations of autism. But it is also a self-propagating belief that has affected scientific research for decades. The more that autism researchers…