Which is why a current movie examining this issue -- Disclosure -- is interesting and, well, funny.
Watching it last week, I found myself tittering, as did some of the other movie-goers, during the sequence in which the woman sexually assaulted the man.
The scene went like this: A female computer company vice-president (Demi Moore) tells her former lover and now subordinate (Michael Douglas), a happily-married man, to go to her office after work.
She offers him a glass of wine and says she will only listen to his work problems if he gives her neckrub. He does as he is told, uncomfortably. She proceeds to kiss and paw him.
He becomes angry and decides to do what she wants, but recoils in time when he sees his reflection. Stuffing his shirt-tails into his pants, he runs away, her curses ringing in his ears.
It was hilarious.
Why? For one thing, the woman was so unsubtle about her desire for him that she was almost comical.
For another, it was obvious that she, being physically weaker, could not get him to do what she wanted if he did not care for it.
A slap from him would have sent her reeling to the floor. How silly she was to think she could overpower him.
But it was mostly funny because conventional wisdom has it that it is men, not women, who do the chasing and harassing. The tables were turned here, and that was a novel touch.
The movie Disclosure brings back that old debate on sexual harassment.
What is sexual harassment, what is friendliness and what is just plain bad manners?
In my nearly 10 years of working life, I have never encountered this problem. This, of course, does not mean that it does not happen.
According to a 1993 survey by the Association of Women for Action and Research, about 50 per cent of women workers in Singapore had experienced sexual harassment.
Of the 389 who responded to the survey, about half said they had been verbally and/or visually harassed, and 27.8 per cent said they had experienced physical harassment.
But what exactly constitutes sexual harassment?
If you ask you boss for a pay rise and he says, "Let's go to the hotel down the road this evening to negotiate your raise", is this harassment?
And if you do go along with his suggestion and meet him for a drink during which your salary is discussed, will this still be harassment?
If you boss likes to slap his files on your buttocks (as the Douglas character does to his secretary in the movie), is that harassment?
The secretary in the movie does not think so. While she feels it is inappropriate behaviour, she also indicates that she does not think he means it as a form of harassment. So is it harassment only when the person receiving the alleged slights feels insulted?
If your boss likes to walk close to you or stands very near you when he speaks, can it just be a bad habit? Will it be harassment if he does it only to female workers but not male?
And what if he makes indecent jokes about women and utters obscenities? Can he just have bad taste?
The movie contends that harassment is about power, that it happens when someone in a superior position -- male or female -- takes advantage of his post to gain favours from a subordinate.
If that is so, harassment from a fellow colleague will just be plain criminal intimidation, or even outrage of modesty.
But, really, should there be a line drawn between harassment from a boss and a colleague?
The United States Supreme Court has defined harassment as incidents which create a work environment that a "reasonable person" will find "hostile or abusive".
"Merely offensive" remarks do not constitute sexual harassment, the court has said. Important factors include the severity and frequency of the conduct and whether it interfered with a person's work.
But all this is vague and subjective. After all, who can even start to define what a "reasonable person" is?
Why is it that it is almost exclusively men who do the harassing, not women?
I suppose because men still outnumber women as bosses. It can also be because they are physically stronger and this makes it easier for them to take advantage of women.
Or maybe they are just built that way. Blame it on their hormones, the way they were brought up, whatever, I do not know.
But can it also be that women are just sensitive about receiving attention from men?
I spoke to three male colleagues -- all young and attractive -- about this.
They said they had never been sexually harassed by women bosses (though I suppose they would not rule out being just plain harassed by them). But they added that they could imagine women doing it.
One noted that there are women who, as a matter of habit, like to grab men by the arm when they are making a point. "If men were sensitive about it, that might count as harassment," he said.
He recalled a former female colleague who sat next to him and had pictures of nude men pinned up on her computer terminal. "If you reversed the roles, some women would think that was harassment," he remarked.
On being preyed upon by a woman boss, the other colleague added: "At a more basic, instinctive level, I would have thought that they guy's ego would make him enjoy the attention."
The third said, half in jest: "I don't think men would mind receiving so much attention from a woman."
Leaving aside sexual harassment, let us move on to the more innocuous issue of how men like to pay attention to women openly.
How a woman reacts to this, I suppose, depends on her level of tolerance.
I know of a girl who went on holiday to Thailand and met men who kept giving her appreciative stares. She spent her vacation bristling at how sexist the men were, and how insulted she felt by their attention.
I like to think I take a more relaxed attitude to all this.
I mean, how should a woman react when a pick-up truck full of young men start giving her wolf whistles?
I do not suppose any malice is intended by this, so, when it happens, I do not get offended by it. I just shake my head at them, smile a little, and move along. And, I must admit, I also feel rather flattered by it.