Are you over 45 and female? Sorry, you’re not getting a job

In the new Amazon Prime series Ride or Die, Hannah Waddingham plays an assassin who is being forced to retire because she is a WOACA. Nearing 50, she has become a “Woman of a Certain Age.”

In late July, in a newspaper article headlined “Fashion high-flyer who lost her job at 50 and ended up on benefits”, Stacey Duguid wrote about the secret shame of being a “middle-aged” woman, unable to find work, despite an illustrious career. A few days later, I told my own similar story to another newspaper: “I had an £80k job and 20 years’ experience. Now, I need benefits to pay my rent”.

It is now time to examine why so many successful women are being shut out of work, despite their experience and expertise. In a world of AI-supervised hiring processes, it is women over 45 who seem to be the first casualties.

Employers have “optimised” their hiring processes, posting job vacancies and then using AI to sift the CVs submitted. It recommends the top 10% that match the ad most closely.

Meanwhile, those applicants – many also using AI – have been tailoring their CVs to the job ad in order to raise their compatibility score. The process has become one where computers talk to other computers, and where the truth is stretched to get that CV up to a 90% match, regardless of actual experience or capability.

Oh, and if the hiring company is using one of the top AI tools – there are only really four – your CV is graded once, and that score sticks. It then applies to any job application to any other company that uses the same system.

To increase my compatibility, I’ve been advised to remove my experience of working outside Britain, remove the date I graduated and play down my extensive career experience. In doing so, I erase my successes over 25 years. Repeatedly, I’ve been told to make up and enhance recent experiences to counter the AI bias.

Sarah Franklin, CEO of AI-powered HR platform Lattice, recently told the podcaster Maureen W Clough that employers are increasingly looking for younger people who are AI natives: “You need this (entry-level) workforce, which is innovative, not calcified in thought. They are also more affordable because they are newer to the workforce.”

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But what about the generation that has seen AI grow up, and who are aware of its limitations? I’ve spent the last calendar year applying to no less than eight companies a week and only had three interviews, all of which came from personal referrals.

Reputation management and personal branding are my areas of expertise, so lifting the lid on the shame of not being able to find employment at the ripe old age of 47 feels as humiliating as wearing a sandwich board. And, speaking as a Women’s Safety campaigner, this unwelcome trend has a huge impact on the safety of women.

For me, it is personal. I’ve got 25 years of experience across media, publishing and events. In 2021, I was named the ninth-best communicator in the United Kingdom by PR Week, in between Marcus Rashford and Dr Jonathan Van-Tam. In 2026, I cannot get my CV through AI gatekeepers.

My three interviews came from over 140 applications. One resulted in the company saying they would be creating a role for me, but that was swiftly rescinded as times are too precarious to deviate from the safe-and-steady route.

I’ve got at least another 15 years of work left in me, if not double that. Am I supposed to just start playing bridge or Mahjong and give up?

Most of the women I am discussing this with, aged 45 and up, talk about consulting or coaching. We cannot all be coaches and consultants. We need hiring practices to tap into our generation of resourceful women.

“Ageism used to feel like a someday problem,” Ella Darlington, an expert in tech marketing, tells me. But, she says, “data gathered through grassroots cause-led organisations Women in PR, and Break the Silence tells a different story: the threshold is now landing at 40, not 45, and it’s threatening to move earlier.”

She adds: “I’m not yet 40, and I’m already watching peers learn to hide their years on a CV, watching who gets called ‘AI talent’ skew suspiciously young, despite peers decades their senior creating and coding incredible AI apps, agents and tools. It means it’s a now problem, and a cultural problem with bigger implications.”