At my first job (consultancy) there was an almost obsessive focus on 50/50 hiring. I think we reached a 60/40 man/woman ratio at some point. We had a couple of technical women but not many. Nevertheless, I (as a trans woman) did feel like I was able to make some female friends or at least have some friendly colleagues. Even had a crush on a girl but she was straight.
Anyway, in one of my last projects at the company, I was sent to a company where the average age was probably around 50 and I realized that out of approximately 100 people on the floor I only saw 1 woman. I thought “wow, ok, this is the opposite of hiring for diversity goals”.
These days, I work at a different company. A few days ago my current HR manager told me she went ballistic at the recruiters because they used my legal name and pronouns, instead of my preferred name and pronouns. I then mentioned that due to a glitch in the system I was getting a couple of emails with my legal name in them. I told her it bothered me a lot more than I expected. She was genuinely shocked and sorry and promised to immediately get to the bottom of it. I instantly trusted her and almost cried thanking her for understanding. Since then we're very open towards each other on how we feel about certain aspects of our work.
Today she said she's moving to a different department. In the end, it's her career and her choice of course but I realized that now I'm the only woman in the department and I'm afraid that we won't get someone as great as her 🙁 I already have a lot of doubts regarding this job, but I feel like getting an HR manager that I don't feel comfortable with is going to be the drop that will make me hate this job.