I agree that women not being identified is not explained, at least not fully explained, by masking. I would make a case that those looking were not looking for autistic women. They did not wish to see them or perhaps did not yet have a robust idea of what an autistic person, either male or female looked like. Even for men, the diagnosis has been very flat, 2-dimensional, perhaps narrow, until recently. I suspect that a huge difference has been made by therapists and researchers in the field self identifying, because it has humanized and dimensionalized the understanding of autism coming from the experts themselves.
