There's little succour for women who’ve been harassed in the workplace

Alison O’Connor worries about the women who work in the background of Leinster House.

‘AH THE lunge,” said my friend laughing in recollection. We’re both married and settled ladies of a certain age now, but our discussion centred around the youthful female experience of the inebriated male suddenly making a drunken lunge and attempting to stick his tongue down your throat.

I had been recalling an office Christmas party of many years ago. I reminded her of a senior editorial executive telling me, during the course of casual conversation, that in his downtime he liked to imagine myself and another female colleague in bed together. As far as I could recall, and this was around 20 years ago, this was the same party where I shared a taxi home with a colleague — around 20 years older than me, married with children. I was getting out first and it was when I turned to say goodnight that this particular lunge occurred. As I type I’m doing that female thing of wondering why I shared the cab with him in the first place, but I’m also remembering the repulsion of the wet feel of his tongue in my mouth.