Experienced women are applying for roles they are qualified to do, yet many are receiving automatic rejections or no meaningful response at all.
Some have even been advised to remove years of experience from their CVs because their career history may reveal their age.
For mums returning after maternity leave, caring responsibilities, relocation, bereavement or another career break, the concern goes even further. Could recruitment technology be treating their experience, age or career gaps as reasons to screen them out?
The honest answer is that we do not yet know the full extent of the problem. But we know enough to take it seriously.
What the recent BBC story revealed
A recent BBC investigation spoke to more than 60 women aged between 40 and 65 who were struggling to secure work despite having substantial professional experience.
Many reported receiving repeated automated rejections, little useful feedback or no response at all. Some believed they were being overlooked because they appeared too old, too senior or too far removed from recent employment.
One woman described removing clues about her age and level of experience from her CV as “Botoxing” it. This can include removing graduation dates, shortening employment history, deleting older achievements and changing senior job titles.
The phrase may sound light-hearted. The reality behind it is not.
Women are being asked to make themselves look less experienced to improve their chances of being considered. For many mums, this pressure sits alongside another challenge: explaining time spent away from paid employment to raise children or care for family members.
The question is no longer only whether human recruiters hold biases. It is also whether the technology used to screen applications may be repeating those biases before a person properly reviews the candidate.
Is AI really rejecting older women and mums?
There is no evidence that every automated rejection received by an older woman or returning mum was caused by AI.
Many different factors can affect an application. A role may attract hundreds of candidates. An employer may already have an internal applicant. A CV may not contain the language used in the job description. The vacancy may close early. A recruiter may make a subjective decision.
Employers also rarely explain which recruitment tools they use, what those tools assess or whether a human reviews every decision. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for an individual candidate to know why she was rejected.
However, the wider concern is credible.
The UK Government’s guidance on responsible AI in recruitment recognises that these systems can create unfair bias or discrimination at every stage of hiring. Its Fairness Innovation Challenge also examined how bias in training data can affect a person’s chances during automated CV screening.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has found that many employers using automated recruitment may rely on decisions made without meaningful human involvement. Its audits have also identified tools that could enable discriminatory filtering or infer characteristics such as gender and ethnicity without a candidate’s knowledge.
The thing is, AI does not invent ageism, the motherhood penalty or discrimination against career breaks. But when a system learns from previous hiring patterns, it may reproduce the same preferences and exclusions at greater speed and scale.
Automation can also make a biased process appear objective. A candidate may receive a score or ranking without knowing what reduced it, whether the criteria were appropriate or how to request a human review.
That is why the conversation matters.
Why mothers may be particularly affected
Many recruitment systems are designed to recognise conventional career progression. They may work best when a candidate has recent experience, familiar job titles, continuous employment and keywords that closely match the vacancy.
Many mothers do not have careers that fit neatly into that pattern.
A mum may have:
- Taken several years away from employment to raise children
- Reduced her hours because full time childcare was unaffordable
- Moved between employment, freelance work and self employment
- Relocated and had to rebuild her professional network
- Taken time away because of bereavement, illness or caring responsibilities
- Returned to a less senior role because it offered greater flexibility
- Developed valuable skills through volunteering, community leadership or running a household that do not appear in a standard job history
- Years of strong experience that no longer uses the newest industry language
None of these things means she has lost her ability to contribute.
But a rigid screening process may interpret a career gap as missing experience, part time work as reduced commitment, older qualifications as outdated knowledge or a varied career history as a lack of direction.
A human recruiter can look at the full context, recognise transferable skills and ask questions. An automated system may only identify what does not match its preferred pattern.
Which brings us to the important question...
Should women “Botox” their CVs?
Women should not have to erase valuable experience to receive fair consideration.
However, a CV is not a complete record of everything you have ever done. It is a focused case for why your experience is relevant to a particular role.
If you have a long career history, it can make sense to give the most detail to your most relevant 10 to 15 years and summarise earlier roles. You can usually remove graduation dates where they are not required. You can also leave out old positions that do not strengthen your application.
That is strategic positioning. It is different from hiding your value or trying to appear younger.
Your CV should make your relevance easier to see. It should not make your experience smaller.
So what should women in this position do instead?
If you are returning after a career break, focus on:
- The skills and results most relevant to the role
- Achievements supported by clear examples or numbers
- Recent training, projects, volunteering or freelance work
- Transferable skills developed across different roles and life stages
- A short, confident explanation of your career break where one is needed
- Language from the job description that accurately reflects your experience
- Simple formatting that an applicant tracking system can read
You do not need to apologise for becoming a mother or taking time away from paid work. And, you do need to help an employer understand what you can deliver now.
What employers need to do differently
The responsibility for fair recruitment cannot sit entirely with women trying to navigate an unclear system.
Employers and recruitment providers should:
- Tell candidates when automated screening, scoring or ranking is used
- Explain what information the system considers
- Test recruitment tools for age, gender and other forms of bias
- Review whether career gaps, part time work or older qualifications receive inappropriate negative weighting
- Include meaningful human review before rejecting candidates
- Give candidates a clear route to request reconsideration
- Assess transferable skills instead of relying only on recent job titles
- Remove unnecessary requirements for continuous or recent experience
- State clearly when returners and applicants with career breaks are welcome
- Train hiring teams to recognise the value of non-linear careers
Employers should also review the job itself. Advertising a role as flexible means very little if the recruitment process quietly favours candidates with uninterrupted, conventional careers.
Returner-friendly hiring should be visible in the criteria, the technology, the interview process and the final decision.
What Mum Hours UK is going to do
At Mum Hours UK, we believe a woman’s experience does not expire because she became a mother, took time away from employment or built her career differently.
Our work has always focused on helping mums find flexible, professional opportunities that can fit around real life. But access to suitable vacancies is only one part of the challenge.
Mums also need the tools to present their experience clearly, navigate automated recruitment, rebuild confidence, develop current skills and identify employers that genuinely welcome returners.
We are now exploring practical support across the Mum Hours UK platform, including:
- Career comeback CV and application resources
- Better support for explaining career gaps and identifying transferable skills
- Guidance on creating clear, applicant tracking system friendly CVs
- AI skills training for career development and the workplace
- Clearer identification of employers offering returnships, career return coaching and returner-friendly recruitment
- Work Club sessions for mums exploring employment, freelancing, consulting or business ownership
- Stronger conversations with employers about fair, transparent recruitment
We also want to develop a meaningful Returner Friendly Employer standard. This would help mums identify organisations that welcome career breaks, value transferable experience and include appropriate human judgement in recruitment.
But first, we need to understand what women are experiencing.
Have you struggled to return to work?
Mum Hours UK is launching an anonymous Career Comeback Survey for mums and experienced women navigating today’s employment market.
We want to understand:
- How long women are spending looking for work
- Whether they are receiving automatic rejections
- How career gaps and age-related concerns affect applications
- Whether women are being advised to remove older experience
- What employers disclose about automated recruitment
- Which career, CV and AI resources would make the greatest difference
Your responses will help shape new Mum Hours UK resources, improve our CV and career support, inform our employer standards and strengthen our advocacy for fairer recruitment.
[Take the anonymous Career Comeback Survey]
Your experience has not expired. You should not have to erase it to be seen.
Sources and further reading
The Fairness Innovation Challenge: key findings, UK Government
Responsible AI in Recruitment, UK Government
Recruitment Rewired, Information Commissioner’s Office
Have you been affected by the issues in this article? Take the anonymous Career Comeback Survey to share your experiences