I took fourteen months off when my daughter was born. When I started applying again, a recruiter friend told me off the record that my applications kept dying at the automated stage at two different companies. Same resume that got me interviews before the break, now with a gap. The models don't have a field for 'was raising a human.' They have a field for continuous employment, and mine wasn't continuous. Every woman I know who took maternity leave has a version of this story. We're told the pay gap is about choices, and then the machines punish the most common choice of all. A human can look at a gap and think 'parent.' The software thinks 'risk.' That difference is worth a ban by itself.
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