I'm not entirely sure when the gender entered the equation.

There are bad female PhD professors, it's not just men. I think OP may be female or chose it for convenience example.

There really should be no excuse for sexism.

It's a result of sexism, though. That's the average age of a tenured professor these days, 60? We are just now starting to see the effects of women enterting the top of the workforce chains.

In the parent comment.

You can just as well be on an F1 and all the professor has to do is deny funding for a semester, and you've wasted years of effort.

Laugh not. I've been there. Not a H1B but a work visa in another country. PhD yes, worse, lapsed but threw it around, better, business setting.

My 'way out' was to stay on and keep building good terms with his boss's equivalent in another part of the company, one of the owners. Worked out ok. Had she not been there, I'd have left.

I also worked overseas on a visa tied to my employer. I managed to move job to stay in the country; otherwise I'd have had issues too. But I didn't think it was an awful situation exactly - it was the exact one I'd chosen.