SACRAMENTO — There were the demeaning personal chores she said her boss assigned her, like buying a shower curtain and blankets. And there was the time that he appeared at the door of his apartment with his pants open, she said, exposing himself to her when she went to pick him up for a vote.

Nancy Kathleen Finnigan had a long list of grievances from her time working for Steve Fox, at the time a State Assembly member from near Los Angeles. But when Ms. Finnigan, a legislative director, took her complaints to the staff of the Assembly Rules Committee, she felt like the one on trial. A meeting with a committee staff member and Mr. Fox began with Mr. Fox “berating and threatening” her over her job performance, Ms. Finnigan said. A month after she made her complaint, she was fired.

For Ms. Finnigan, who this year won a $100,000 settlement from the Assembly in a wrongful termination lawsuit that claimed harassment and retaliation, the experience confirmed a widespread grievance among women who work in one of the country’s most influential legislatures: that there is no safe place for them to go for help.

Nearly 200 women have signed a letter denouncing a culture of rampant sexual misconduct in and around the state government here in Sacramento. They complain of male lawmakers groping them, of male staff members threatening them and of a human resources system so broken that it is unable to give serious grievances a fair hearing.