A "gender free" day?

Apparently a public service department in another state is now asking/telling staff that the first Wednesday of every month now needs to be a "they day", a "gender free" day. Don't use "he" or "she" on that day, use "they instead".
 The following comes from the article I was sent,
 "A memo emailed to staff said, ‘They Day’ is promoted as a “new recurring calendar event” that aims to raise awareness of “gendered pronouns.” “Non-binary identities are just as valid as binary gender identities… Names don’t always correspond to a person’s gender. There may be gaps between a person’s gender identity and your perception of the persons. Saying ‘they’ is more flowing and inclusive than saying ‘he’ or ‘she.'”


I had to read that twice to make sure I was reading what I thought I was reading.  If it is true then it is surely political correctness gone mad?
Yes of course there is a tiny minority of people who do not identify as "he" or "she" and there is another tiny minority who go through the long and complex physical and psychological process of moving from "he" to "she" or vice versa.  We need to be aware of their needs.
What we surely don't need is to try and suggest that everyone becomes "they"? Why? It seems to me we are tackling this "problem" in completely the wrong way. What we need is respect, respect for differences. We need to be able to say that there are differences between the sexes and that is all the more reason why everyone should be treated with equal respect in all aspects of life. It isn't going to change the fact that it is women who are the child bearers. But - equal respect, genuine equal respect, would bring about equal pay, an equal share of the housework, an equal number of women on the board of a big company, an equal number of men working in retail and so on. Equal respect would mean that my friend R... and his partner J.....- a same sex couple -would be treated with equal respect.  It would mean that I wouldn't have to endure people talking about me and my tricycle as if I was a two year old who doesn't understand what is being said. (I let them go on for a bit about that yesterday and then said, "The tricycle runs on banana power and I am about to go home and read a doctoral thesis."  Naughty of me perhaps but I'd had enough.)
It isn't "gendered" language which is the problem. It's the way we treat other people.