The 1991 hearing had a peculiar impact. People predicted that women would never come forward, and just the opposite happened. They came forward in record numbers. Rules and practices were put into place, people started having conversations, lawsuits were filed, more cases went to the Supreme Court in the next three years. There had only been one Supreme Court case before 1991. On the political front, women ran for office because they felt they weren’t being represented.

Something did happen, but there was also backlash. You saw the rise in these forced arbitration agreements. Nondisclosure agreements took hold and started to rise in the ’90s. Increasingly, class action lawsuits were more and more difficult.

Increasingly as well, organizations started to look at the response to sexual harassment as an effort to make sure there was a compliance with the law and not an effort to solve the problems that existed. This experiment of how we’re going to address harassment — it failed.

Q. So what should be done?

A. It’s not the glamorous, headline-making work, it’s the day-to-day examination, combing through and interrogating things that people have just assumed were the only way things could be done.

Ms. Hill then ticked off a list of what needed to change:

• A process of reporting harassment where it is clear to every employee where to turn and how they will hear about the outcome. Those will have to be public, even though companies cite employee privacy, to build trust and prevent violators from being passed off to other workplaces.

• Investigations that are independent, often by third parties, particularly if the accused are senior executives or rainmakers.

• Training that includes implicit bias coupled with bystander training, creating a workplace culture where everyone feels responsible for calling out harassment.