Hey guys, long time redditor using a throwaway for anonymity reasons. I don't know where else to post this but this place felt appropriate to some degree. Please forgive me if it's not exactly the right sub but I'm hoping it is.

I work at a Fortune 50 company and love my job. I'm a manager and work with a lot of males and females in my department (about 50 people in my department).

There's another department that we usually work with, that has an executive whom is female. Now, this executive is very "anti-male" and most people know it for various reasons. She has never came out and flat out said it, or done anything OBVIOUS, but we know because she is usually VERY friendly to women, and absolutely indifferent or just down-right RUDE to men. For example, if a female associate asks her a question, she takes her time and answers very clearly and patiently. But, when male employees (a manager yesterday for example) ask her a question, she completely snaps at them telling them off and that they should know or in a very condescending way say, "What do you think?!" Now, this doesn't happen rarely to say she may be in a bad mood or it's coincidental. It happens so much that pretty much most men consider her to be toxic and 100% of the time try to limit their interaction with her.

On to why I'm posting. There was a manager position open in her department which had been open for a few weeks. I had a male friend of mine that was a VERY good match and he asked if he could use my name as a reference when applying. I said sure and told him about the female executive, but he insisted that he would work with her and learn from her.

Fast-forward to today when I find out the position was filled and to my shock, the new employee is a 24 year old female (average age of managers is around 30) and she just got her bachelors from an arts university (most managers have a Masters or a Bachelors from a very competitive school). I went to the executive's office and asked "Hi **, I wanted to see if you had a chance to review my friend's application for the ** manager position. I thought he was a great fit and would have been a asset to this company and your department". She looked at me extremely annoyed, and responded "There are too many men in this company" and then looked back to her computer and continued doing whatever she was doing before I came in. I was caught off guard because of her answer and just walked out as she basically ignored me after that.

I was shocked. I couldn't believe she basically told me that she didn't hire my friend because he was a male! I don't have any proof of this as she verbally said it, and when I told my friend he was livid. He couldn't believe it. Now he's asking me if he should pursue legal action but we don't know what could be done considering she could easily deny it and it could cost me my job.

What can we do in this situation? Is there anything that can be done? This woman is toxic and 95% of employees in her department are females! No wonder, because she is discriminating applicants based on their gender!

Any advice here would help that would not get me in trouble or risk me losing my job. It's extremely frustrating as my friend is super down ever since and he really would have been a great fit for that position.

Thank you!