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The UK Guardian reports that Dr Judith Gould who, together with Lorna Wing, carried out important research into the link between Asperger’s syndrome, autism and other pervasive developmental disorders in 1979 is now criticizing the medical establishment for failing to diagnose Aspergers in girls:

Gould, who is director of the National Autistic Society’s Lorna Wing centre for autism and co-founder of the Centre for Social and Communication Disorders, said: “We’re failing girls at the moment. We are doing many thousands of them a great disservice. They are either not being picked up in the first place, but if they ask for help they are being turned away. Even if they are referred for diagnosis, they are commonly rejected.”

She argues that this occurs in part because stereotypes of how Aspergers manifests itself are based on boys rather than girls. I would add that this is not unusual: most of our models for different categories of being are based on the male gender with girl versions being seen as adaptations thereof.

The article goes on to mention that girls learn to mask their Aspergers because they are taught that if they are good, no one will see their differences. I know from my own experience that girls are much more likely to be told to put down their books and “be social”. When you are forced to spend time with other children, you learn quickly to hide your differences so as to escape at least some of the taunting.

Also mentioned in the article are differences in the subjects of obsessions:

boys hyperfocus on facts and certain interests, such as trains or weather. Girls escape into fiction. They have imaginary friends, live in another world with fairies and witches, obsessively watch soap operas or become intensely interested in celebrities.

This in itself would appear to be stereotypical. Some of my obsessions have been fictional (fairies, witches, and even soap operas), but in elementary school I also had a deep interest in dinosaurs. My fascination with science fiction led also to an interest in science fact. I suspect that the differences being described here have more to do with social conditioning than anything else. A young girl desperate for social contact might just develop (or seem to develop) an interest in horses leading to obsessive collecting of My Little Pony, even if she never has an opportunity to ride the real thing and would really rather ride a Stegasaurus anyway, if that’s what all the other girls in her class do.

Related posts:

1. One For the “I Thought They Were Already Dead” File
2. Snakes and Spice and Everything Nice in the Classroom
3. Sex-Segregated Classrooms
4. On the Rarity that is the Female Aspie
5. On Gender Difference
6. National Girls and Women in Sports Day
7. Cat Love Is Not a Disease
8. Blog Against Disablism: I am disabled
9. No More Asperger’s?
10. Gender & Diagnosis

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