GETTY - STOCK It would be the first of many sexually aggressive quips I would endure

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It would be the first of many sexually aggressive quips I would endure during time working for a small tech start-up in London. At 23, I had been excited about the prospect of my first job after leaving university. I was joining a team of 10 men, mostly under the age of 40, in a company run by a husband and wife. I envisaged a happy future. I hadn’t expected the tirade of “banter” I would encounter on a daily basis. Anything they deemed phallic in appearance – bananas, carrot sticks, baguettes – would prompt sleazy comments if I was spotted with them at lunchtime. I eventually started leaving the office to eat my meals after one particularly unpleasant exchange in which they decided that the fact I had chosen a salty chorizo sandwich meant I would enjoy performing certain sex acts. They soon found new ways to belittle me.

GETTY - STOCK I hadn’t expected the tirade of ‘banter’ I would encounter on a daily basis

Comments about my appearance were frequent and they expected me to be flattered when they revealed that of all the other female candidates for my job, I was the best looking. Within days I was watching what I said and wore, changing my behaviour to avoid unwanted attention. So why, you might ask, did I not complain? If I told you my CEO allowed the group of men to identify me as “it” in his presence, need I say more? And there was no HR department. After taking a week off to deal with the stress, I was fired just three months into my role. It was yet another blow to my battered working ego. University does not prepare you for this sort of experience. My story is far from unusual.

GETTY - STOCK I was fired just three months into my role

A friend wears skirts to work because “the men don’t approve of trousers on women”. Another had her bottom touched by her boss when called into his office. One was asked if she would like to see her colleague’s penis. Another received texts suggesting lewd acts her workmate would like to perform on her. The list goes on. As the first girl in my family to go to university, I believed I was growing up in an “age of equality”. Certainly, that is what we millennials are constantly told. But by the end of those three months a group of men had succeeded in making me feel entirely inferior.

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As one female friend who works in the City advised me with resignation: “Pick your working battles.” She herself had publicly shouted at a male colleague for grabbing her bottom on a number of occasions. It is depressing that women should ever find themselves deciding at which point sleazy banter crosses a line and becomes something more intimidating that needs to be taken to the HR department. The recent revelations about film producer Harvey Weinstein and his lecherous, abusive behaviour have opened the floodgates on the epidemic of sexual harassment that women are forced to endure at work. But what is most depressing about the scandal is that no one was surprised to hear what had been going on. During the most difficult times of my own experience I found myself wondering if we have really moved that far beyond the dark ages of Mad Men, the drama set in an advertising agency in the 1960s which portrayed a time when groping, derogatory comments and inappropriate stares were the norm. “Of course we have!” many people would argue.

GETTY - STOCK A survey found one in five women had reported sexual harassment in the workplace