We believe there may be many undiagnosed girls and women with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and we want to find them. Many more males than females are diagnosed with ASD but we’re not convinced this is due to biological causes. We suspect that females are more likely to go undiagnosed because we are just not good at finding them. This may be because girls don’t have the same disruptive behaviours as boys that are a problem for parents and teachers and so we don’t notice girl’s difficulties. It may also be that society views ASD as a male condition so we overlook the symptoms in girls. Intense interests in ASD may also be more socially acceptable in girls, such as an obsession with a music band or artist, so we don’t see them as unusual and associated with ASD.

We want to search for undiagnosed cases of ASD by offering a free diagnostic assessment to parents who have a child with confirmed ASD who think they may have been ‘missed’ to see how many “lost girls” we find. We are a group of autism researchers and psychologists from Deakin University who are experts in females with ASD and have made it our mission to find the “lost girls”.