Camouflaging/masking in autistic women is very common, however, there have been very few studies that have investigated this concept. Autism is diagnosed more commonly in boys, which likely has to do with the diagnostic criteria not being sensitive to the way that autism presents in girls.

This study aimed to understand how autistic women are impacted by camouflaging and if they have different experiences of diagnosis when compared to men.

The study found that on average, women take longer to suspect autism and longer to receive a correct diagnosis of autism. Women are more likely to receive incorrect diagnoses of other psychiatric disorders before they are correctly diagnosed with autism. When the study tested camouflaging behavior using the CAT-Q, they found that camouflaging predicted anxiety and depression in women. An additional finding was that camouflaging did not predict early identification of autism, which suggests that there are other factors at play that are leading to women being diagnosed later in life.

This study provides a good start for understanding camouflaging behaviors in women, however much more research needs to be done on this concept. A limitation of the study was that it was not able to compare women to non-binary people due to a small sample size and it also was conducted on a sample of level 1 autistic people, so we cannot determine how camouflaging effects autistic people with higher support needs.