Been on both sides of this fence. A couple of anecdotes:
-Whenever I've been a manager (headed up a department of 70 persons), I looked to hire a diverse team. Down in CR race is not as big a deal, but obviously diversity goes beyond race. We aimed for diversity of experience (internal promotions vs external hires), geography (including foreigners), age, and lifestyle (including LGBQ). I was proud to have an extremely diverse team. Our overriding principle, though was to hire the person most qualified for the job.
-Prior to COVID, we had a rather large restructuring. I was passed over for a job even though my experience in the field was significantly greater than the lady who ended up as my boss. The general manager explicitly told me that he picked her over me because he had too many men reporting to him and needed to have an even amount of women on the senior manager team.
-During COVID we had another large restructuring. When the round pf cuts came to management ranks, it was almost exclusively among guys 50+. We were probably the more expensive part of management, but the coincidence that we were all men in that 50-57 range was an uncomfortable coincidence. No women were let go in that round (at the senior level).
-While job hunting I applied to a position with a fortune 500 company. I knew the manager, sent in my resume. He tells me..."This is exactly what we need, if anything you're overqualified. Only problem is that I need to fill this with a woman to hit my Diversity Score target."
-My wife was a corporate warrior for 25 years at a Fortune 500 company. She was eventually one of the highest ranked women in the Latin American unit. She absolutely hated diversity quotas, which in LatAm usually boil down to gender. She always felt like people thought she was diversity hire when in reality she had two advanced degrees and was a high-level performer. She hated she had to promote some women who weren't ready for positions because of their gender. But she also hated that the cheese maze at her company was set up to favor men and was antithetic to having a family.