It makes me so happy that this point is brought up: a lot of people lost respect for Fury when he picked a woman as his agent. A lot of people meaning men.
This is support when you notice the majority of the Hydra operatives in The Winter Soldier/Agents of Shield were men: Pierce, the Strike team, all of the supporting techs, the soldiers. I only remember seeing one female agent siding with them visibly, and she was a member of the Strike unit.
And some of the people that Fury trusts the most are Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff, and Melinda May. He promotes on merit, and some people just didn’t like that a woman got the job they sucked too much to get. And so some people turned to Hydra.
