Read the full article at The Washington Post.

Seven years ago, before she covered politics for The Guardian, Sabrina Siddiqui was just breaking into the world of Washington journalism and sought a veteran reporter’s guidance.

They met for lunch, where he dispensed advice — but later, he started sending her messages about how “sexy” she looked.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Siddiqui said in an interview. “At that time, I was only 24. I was young. I was scared. I didn’t want to take on someone senior to me.”

Four in ten women have stories like this, according to a recent study by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Four in ten women report enduring unwanted advances in a work environment, which could include a come-on, a gendered insult and sexual assault.

But only a tiny fraction — between 6 and 13 percent — ever lodge a formal complaint, the EEOC found. Less than a third tell their bosses or human resources.

They often don’t want to seem dramatic. They’re nervous people won’t believe them. They fear being judged or barred from opportunities or fired. They choose to brush it away, though harassment is linked to depression and anxiety — forces that can steer a promising career into paralysis.

Even A-listers have opted to keep quiet. Take Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Ashley Judd — all actresses that started in Hollywood with money and family connections and still waited years to speak out against Harvey Weinstein.

“That primarily has to do with fear,” said Lilia Cortina, a psychology professor and sexual harassment researcher at the University of Michigan. “There’s fear of retaliation. Fear of being a troublemaker. Fear of the reporting process.”

In 1992, the earliest year of government data available, the EEOC received 5,607 sexual harassment complaints — nearly all of them from women. The number jumped to 8,927 in 1996 and 9,456 in 2000.

Gradually, Cortina said, people began to realize the behaviors some once saw as socially acceptable — making a suggestive remark, pinching a colleagues’ rear, offering an opportunity in exchange for bedroom favors  — were predatory. And the complaints grew every year through 2010, when there were 12,695.

Then movement slid to a halt. The average number of annual complaints filed between 2010 and 2016 held steady at 12,526, with most coming from women. Government researchers say they don’t know why the reports have remained practically the same for the last seven years.

“There was a point in time when they were going up, and women and other people were more willing to come forward,” said Chai Feldblum, one of the EEOC’s four commissioners. To analysts, that suggested taking action was becoming less intimidating.

What’s troubling now about reports, Feldblum said: “Over the last five years, they have not gone down.”