PERSPECTIVES ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT : Coerced Into Silence No More : Women pursuing professional careers often were, in effect, blackmailed into paying their mentors’ price.

The latest twist in the Thomas hearings struck a nerve among professional women. Ironically, we fear revealing incidents of sexual harassment on precisely the same grounds that Clarence Thomas uses to defend his stands against affirmative action: We think it will undermine the perception that other people have of our achievements--especially people with power over our careers.

The front-page photograph of law professor Anita Hill could have been the photo of almost any professional woman I know, were she to summon the courage to denounce her professors/bosses/mentors. To make it to a position of stature in our society in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s too often called for us to engage in (or refuse) acts that we then did not even know to name.

Let me set the record straight and say that I enjoyed times of great professional and personal growth free of sexual innuendo of any kind. At Sophie Newcomb College, where educating young ladies was a tradition of long standing, no faculty member ever approached me.

After graduation, as I prepared for a research trip to West Africa on a Ford Foundation grant, my mentor gave me some straightforward advice: “Take birth-control pills; even the nuns there do.” I thought his comment had something to do with a rash of rapes that had been reported among expatriate women in Africa. Later, it seemed a symbolic warning about what lay ahead in graduate school.

At Columbia University, two members of my thesis committee of five distinguished male professors, very senior in their fields, found time to invite me to have sex. At first, it didn’t occur to me that this was sexual harassment; in fact, I was flattered that so great a man, 40 years my senior, would take time out for me. The day I defended my thesis, successfully, another member of the committee escorted me back to my hotel room and promptly lunged for me. This time I was more in command of my wits (after all, the thesis trial was behind me), and I moved aside nimbly as the esteemed professor hurtled himself across the bed and onto the floor on the other side. For years afterward, I wondered if the guys had gotten together after the meeting and decided who would do the honors.

When I arrived in California in 1968, social codes were changing, and I was much more crushed by the UCLA political science department chairman’s statement that “UCLA doesn’t hire women” than I was by being propositioned by senior men. Two years later, however, my spirits reached a new low when, during a job interview, the expectation of sexual favors was made explicit.

By the time I made it to the U.S. Senate as a fellow in 1973, my consciousness had been raised. Fortunately, I was working for an honorable man, then-Sen. Bill Brock (later secretary of labor), who was always extremely correct. But, as I assisted the senator in his work on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, because I was young and reasonably attractive, a rumor appeared (some said started by the banking community opposing the bill) that I had turned his head.

So, you see, when we are successful because of our work, we are often accused of “sleeping our way to the top.” The reverse is often true, too: Motivated by guilt and fear of exposure, the very men who made such sexual demands often later stand in our way.

Years after I left Columbia, I saw, by accident, a letter that my original harasser had written. It said that I was “charming”--hardly a recommendation; how many professors are hired for their “charm”?

Was I raped? No. Did I have a choice? At the time I thought not. Do I fear the consequences, these many years since, of writing this? Yes.

But the time has come for professional women to speak out, as the courageous Anita Hill did, about their experiences on the way to the top. If we can’t afford to tell the truth, what woman can?