Off the Spectrum — The Lost Girls of Autism

For most of the history of autism research, the condition was studied almost exclusively in boys. The diagnostic criteria were built on that population, the case studies cited boys, and the clinical picture that became standard — and still shapes how most practitioners recognise autism today — reflects a male presentation. The result is that girls and women who experience the condition differently, and who often develop sophisticated strategies for masking their differences, have been systematically missed. The consequences range from years of misdiagnosis to a lifetime of exhausting self-concealment and the accumulation of secondary mental health problems that could have been avoided.

This talk at Barnard College examines the scientific and institutional reasons the gap persists, and what researchers and clinicians are doing to address it. The conversation draws on a growing body of research into the distinct ways autism presents in female and nonbinary individuals — not as a milder version of the male presentation, but as a genuinely different phenotype that current diagnostic tools are poorly equipped to capture.

Barnard is a fitting venue: the question of how scientific frameworks built around male bodies and male experience have failed women is one the institution has engaged with across disciplines. This talk applies that lens to neuroscience with specificity and rigour, and is likely to be useful to clinicians, researchers, educators, and anyone — diagnosed or not — who has wondered why so many women arrive at an autism diagnosis late in life, often through the process of understanding a child.