Enum returning int instead of string C#

Question

Enum Class which I intend to extract male and female values here

public class Employee
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public DateTime DoB { get; set; }
    public enum MF { Male,Female }
    public MF Gender { get; set; } //here's my target
}

Data Access Layer here's where I extract from my DB msql

public IList<Employee> GetAllEmployees()
{
    string query = "EXEC GetAllEmployees";
    string constring = "Data Source=.\\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=ProjectDatabase;Integrated Security=True;Pooling=False";
    IList<Employee> AllEmployees = new List<Employee> {};

    using (SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(constring))
    {
        using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(query, con))
    {
        List<Employee> customers = new List<Employee>();
        //cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
        con.Open();
        using (SqlDataReader sdr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
    {
        while (sdr.Read())
       {
           AllEmployees.Add(new Employee
           {
              ID     = Convert.ToInt32(sdr["ID"]),
              Name   = sdr["Name"].ToString(),
              DoB    = (DateTime)sdr["DoB"],
              Gender = (MF)Enum.Parse(typeof(MF), (string)sdr["Gender"]), //here's where it extracts the Gender value as 0 or 1 instead in plain words
           });
                }
                    }
                    con.Close();
                    return AllEmployees;
                }
            }
        }

Business Logic Layer self explanatory

        public IList<Employee> GetEmployees(string name,MF gender)
        {
            EmployeeDAL EDAL = new EmployeeDAL();

            if (name == "")
                return EDAL.GetAllEmployees(); //Ignore this for now

            else
                return EDAL.GetFilteredEmployees(name,gender); //this gets used in this case
        }

Controller Layer where it all starts

[Route("GetEmployees")]
[HttpPost]
public IList<Employee> GetEmployees(JArray PostData)
{
   string Name = (string)PostData[0]["Name"];
   MF Gender = (MF)Enum.Parse(typeof(MF), (string)PostData[0]["Gender"]);//grabed from a post request from AngularJS code
   EmployeeBLL EBLL = new EmployeeBLL();
   return EBLL.GetEmployees(Name,Gender);
}

Hello all, I would like to use my Gender enum to return male or female for an AngularJS POST request, but I keep getting 0 for male and one for female. How do I fix this? All additional details in the comments.

Answer 1

To you Enums look like strings due to the way they are named, but in truth they are numbers, at least according to a computer. You can call .ToString() to get the name as a stirng.