Power has been entwined with the evolution of male manufacturing jobs since the industrial revolution, said Alice Kessler-Harris, a professor emerita of history at Columbia University. Although many of the earliest factory jobs in places like textile mills were held by women who could be spared from the farm, men reserved many of the highest-status, highest-paying jobs. “It isn’t new,” Professor Kessler-Harris said of sexual harassment and male resentment. “It’s as old as male culture. The men assumed the best jobs, the skilled jobs, were theirs. If a woman dared to enter them, God help her.”

“Regardless of who you work for, you will run into the same people over and over again who will not want to work with you just because you reported harassment. In most cases women become unemployable because of it.”

Today, women at those plants say they have been subjected to many of the same abuses. And like those who complained before them, they say they were mocked, dismissed, threatened and ostracized. One described being called “snitch bitch,” while another was accused of “raping the company.” Many of the men who they say hounded them kept their jobs.

Her success raises a question newly relevant after Hillary Clinton’s loss: Is this stealth strategy the most effective way for women to gain and wield power?