TL;DR
Upwards of 60 women, aged between 40 and 65 and mostly carrying decades of senior experience, have told the BBC they are sending out CVs and hearing almost nothing back. Many believe automated screening is a factor. One described “Botoxing” her CV — stripping out anything that revealed her age.
Stacey Duguid, 52, spent 16 months applying for jobs after a career in fashion, and got back barely more than a few automated replies. Koeyli Jaluka, 49, applied for 442 roles in nine months and was occasionally told she was “too senior”, which she reads as code for old. Anna Cowie, 52, has been out of work for close to four years after 30 years in advertising and is now claiming jobseeker’s allowance.
Whether AI caused any individual rejection is unknowable, because employers rarely disclose how their hiring processes work. That opacity is the heart of the problem.
The regulatory gap
Laura Holden, an AI lawyer who founded the Bonsai consultancy, argues firms often do not understand the tools they have bought. Some grade applicants from A to D and nudge recruiters towards the top bands; others flag a seven-year career break as something to note. Marketed as decision support, they operate in practice as automated decision-making, and no global rule requires vendors to show their workings.
Dr Eleanor Drage of the University of Cambridge calls the underlying logic “completely faulty”, arguing these systems cannot weigh a career break or transferable skills the way a person can.
A City of London taskforce on women pivoting to digital roles puts the potential displacement in the hundreds of thousands by 2035, with severance bills topping £750m if retraining does not keep pace. In its survey of over 1,000 women, 68% had been offered no route into digital roles by their employer.
Looking forward
The government says equality and data protection law already covers AI systems and it will act if more is needed. That is the same position ministers took when two thirds of Britons rejected AI CV sifting in polling reported here on 4 August. Workday, facing US claims it screened applicants unlawfully, denies wrongdoing. Some London employers have reportedly dropped AI screening altogether rather than carry the risk.