‘Autism only affects boys.’

So they said, and so we were all brought up to believe.

The history of autism is male. When autistic girls meet doctors, they are often misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, personality disorders, or are missed altogether. Many women only discover they have the condition when they are older, losing out on decades of support and understanding.

But the tide is at last turning. Medical science, which betrayed females with autism for so long, is looking at the facts again. Leading neuroscientists, including award-winning Gina Rippon, are asking why female autism has been systematically ignored and misunderstood for so long. Generations of researchers, convinced autism was a male problem, simply didn’t bother looking for it in women. But it is now clear that the condition is different for women and girls, and that camouflaging – hiding autistic traits to fit in – is more widespread than we thought. Urgent and insightful, this book is a clarion call for society to recognise the full spectrum of autistic experience.