Ostensibly this is for some kind of reporting and statistics, but I feel bad while answering it every time (about 100+ times last year) and wonder if checking the box that says "prefer not to say" automatically disqualifies me.
like "oh he didn't write a pronoun at all! he's not a culture fit!" we've decided to move forward with other candidates that more closely align with our qualifications
Oddly enough, I’m a white male and the most protected class “abuses” I’ve ever witnessed is when I’ve been told I wasn’t allowed to hire white males. I’ve actually been told I could not hire any one except a women before. My team was shorthanded for a year. I work in a niche that is probably 90%+ male and probably 70% white.
What’s also weird is, I usually hire through recruiters so when I tell them “only send me female resumes” the search just goes radio silent and I don’t even see what kind of talent I’m missing out on.
I’ve been a fairly high level hiring manager at multiple firms and those answers never mattered or were even visible to me; even at the VP level.
I find this particularly sad because of how harmful it is to trans people, especially trans people who are not "out". Forcing such people to specify a pronoun is forcing them to choose between "out yourself to everyone" and "disavow your own identity", and feels just awful. Not to mention people in earlier stages of understanding their own gender, who may feel a pointed distaste for the pronouns that they've always used without quite understanding why.
(To clarify tone, I'm not criticizing your comment.)