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Jessica, Bonnie, the question about how to respond to sexual harassment is complicated; it depends on what you're trying to do. Laurie is right that companies' internal sexual harassment investigations—and the lawsuits that occasionally follow—can be harsh. HR is far more often on the side of the company than of the employee; for more detail, check out Susan Antilla's brutally detailed book about the financial services industry, Tales From the Boom Boom Room.
But I think the question is: What's the goal? Are you trying to have the best possible career, when you can easily find a comparable job elsewhere? Moving on may be best for your sanity. Are you stuck in a job—say, because you're a single mother in a recession-stunned region, with few other options? Register your complaint—but have allies within and outside the company before you do.
Or if your harasser is predatory, serially making life miserable for one woman after another, and you want to put a stop to it, not just for your own sake but for everyone's? Please, please, file with HR, and also go to the EEOC and file your complaint! Do not leave that man in place. Maria Hinojosa, at NOW on PBS, recently talked to some teens who took their companies to court and won. Making the company pay also puts other employers on notice: The cost of replacing your supervisor is less than the cost of fighting your lawsuit.
No matter what you do, your encounter with sexual harassment—which takes you away from full career concentration for however long you're worrying about avoiding your harasser's hands and hostility—is part of why we have a wage gap. On average—in every job category—women working full-time make less than men working full-time, as the New York Times shows so beautifully here. Forget what men do to women on the job for a few months before you quit or complain: What's really disgusting is making a quarter or a third less than your male peers.
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