Until the new legislation came into effect at the start of 2019, most German job ads indicated in brackets that male and female candidates were welcome. Now, a third gender, “divers” (other), has been added.

Many companies, including pharmaceuticals giant Bayer, energy firm Eon, Deutsche Bank and Vodaphone, said they have not yet received a single job application from someone identifying as intersex.

Other firms, such as Commerzbank, said that they did not record gender in the selection process.

Germany’s postal service, Deutsche Post, was an outlier, reporting that 700 applications had come from people in the “other” category. However, a spokeswoman said this might be down to people ticking that box purely because they did not want to disclose their gender.

In the first few months after the changes came into effect, authorities in larger German cities reported only dozens of cases in which people wanted to register as the third gender.