(FORTUNE Magazine) – Judith Waters, a professor of psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University who gives seminars on sexual harassment, reports that the biggest problem she encounters initially with managerial groups is getting males to take the subject seriously. ''Hoo, hoo,'' they josh on entering the room, ''I'm glad we're getting a course on this so I can finally figure out how to do it.'' Waters responds by beginning a deadpan recital: ''In the latest court settlement of a sexual harassment case in this state, the plaintiff's employer agreed to pay her $100,000. In that instance, the harasser had not laid a finger upon the woman. . .'' End of joshing. Sexual harassment is no joke. Just ask the woman who has had it happen to her. Estimates of the percentage of working women who have been harassed on the job range from 10% to upwards of 50%, with the preponderance of studies coming down around 20% to 30%. True, some attentions are welcome -- many a marriage has been made on the job. Yes, sometimes men are harassed by women, and yes, sometimes an individual is hit on, as the phrase tellingly goes, by a person of the same sex. But each of these two types of harassment, the experts say, almost certainly represents no more than a tenth of all incidents, if that. We're talking here about a man bothering a woman who just wants a civilized working relationship. The cost of such behavior is high, and not just in terms of what the company and the harasser may end up paying if the lawyers get into it. Says Carol S. Gold, who helped create the program on harassment that Learning International, the big training outfit, sells to corporations: ''Many women who are harassed just quietly quit.'' There go the kilobucks you spent to train that marketing analyst. The productivity of those who stay on typically takes a pretty big hit too. For the manager who has to handle them, what's maddening about all but the most blatant instances of harassment is their ''Roshomon'' quality. In that classic Japanese tale, four people are caught up in a violent incident in a forest. The account that each subsequently gives of what happened differs in almost every particular from the other versions. James Ledvinka, a professor of management at the University of Georgia, tells of showing a list of eight hypothetical situations at his corporate seminars on harassment. Sample situation: A male repeatedly offers to drive a female co-worker home. The typical male response was ''No harassment there.'' The typical female response: ''Now that's harassment.'' FOR A CLEAR-CUT case of harassment, probably nothing beats what experts call the quid pro quo: If you don't have sex with me, you don't get the promotion or the sale -- or get to keep your job. Such loathsome behavior, the experts say, often springs not just from lust but from the pleasure of exercising power. The greater the disparity between their positions -- he, as boss, can fire her; she, as mail clerk, desperately needs the job -- the stronger the coercion. Such coercion is patently illegal, at least if it's perpetrated within a company -- one employee of Zorch Corp. tries it on another. Under federal law, such harassment constitutes sexual discrimination, and the victim can sue her employer. Terry M. Dworkin, a business law professor at Indiana University, notes too that the aggrieved increasingly are bringing civil lawsuits against the offender and sometimes against the company. Victims harassed on the job by someone outside the company may in some cases have grounds to sue their employer; the law remains unclear on this. If the hit was hard enough, they certainly can sue the harasser -- that customer, for example, who says no bed, no sale. Civil suits typically result in bigger damage awards than actions under federal or state antidiscrimination laws. Nor does it take much to get into court: Sometimes one incident will suffice. Maintains Dworkin: ''If a male boss merely says to a female subordinate, 'Let's go out to dinner to discuss your prospects for promotion,' she's got a prima facie case.'' The most common kinds of harassment, toward the ambiguous end of the spectrum, are also against the law, but here the courts require more of the plaintiff. Under federal law, upheld last year in a major Supreme Court decision, yahoo sexist conduct that ''has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment'' constitutes illegal harassment. That conduct, for which the employer is liable, could be the running commentary by the loading-dock crew on the female shipping clerk's anatomy, the dirty jokes the boss insists on telling in staff meetings, even raunchy pinups on office walls. The grosser and more persistent the conduct, the better the plaintiff's case. THIS SO-CALLED environmental sexual harassment covers a multitude of sins. Suppose a male constantly importunes a female co-worker, his peer in the corporate hierarchy, to go out with him. She resists, but finally, worn down, she agrees, and the relationship ripens into an affair. Then he breaks the liaison off. Theodore J. St. Antoine, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, warns that she can bring a suit against her employer. To win, she will have to convince a jury that although she voluntarily entered into the affair, her co-worker's advances were unwelcome initially. That is enough to constitute environmental harassment. If you believe yourself to be the victim of sexual harassment, think hard before going to court. Consider alternatives short of subjecting yourself to that kind of hassle, which probably won't advance your career. First, the experts say, document the incident as soon after it occurs as possible. Write down exactly what happened, when, and where. Then tell someone, a friend, maybe a trusted co-worker. The ensuing conversation will help you make sure you're not just paranoid, will further the process of documentation, and may produce some interesting new information. Professor Laraine Masters Glidden of St. Mary's College of Maryland notes that if one woman in the office has the courage to tell another that the boss made a pass at her, it may soon emerge that the boss has made a pass at every woman who works for him. Sexual harassers who don't get caught tend to try it again. SHOULD YOU confront the harasser directly? If the incident was a fairly mild one -- maybe he didn't realize how offensive his behavior appeared -- and you get along well otherwise, pluck up your courage and approach him. The standard wisdom says, Tell him what he did wrong, how it made you feel, and what you want him to do, which is knock it off. A stronger variant on this tactic, for messier situations, specifies sending him a certified letter (of which you retain a copy) that lays all of the above out in gruesome detail. Such letters, the experts say, tend be remarkably effective. They also carry risks, though. If your action prompts him to harass you further or to try to undermine your standing in the organization, or if the situation is particularly grievous, go to someone higher up. Only if the company fails to respond, or its response proves woefully inadequate, should you go look for a lawyer or complain to a state or federal regulatory agency. The arduousness of the process and the hazards that accompany it persuade most experts that, apart from a few plausible rip-off artists, few women bring groundless complaints. For an employer concerned about preventing problems, the steps to take are fairly obvious. At a minimum, have a well-publicized corporate policy spelling out what constitutes harassment and forbidding such behavior. The best preventive of all, though, may be education -- getting men and women to talk to each other about how their perceptions in these matters may differ. Males could find themselves a bit sobered about all that ''innocent horseplay,'' and Ms. Lavoom may understand that at least some of it was more innocent than she thought.