Coruscation

"I have seen women in great positions of authority who make assumptions that the women who work for them are their friends," she said. "They share intimate information with them -- their marital relations, their sex lives, whether they think the delivery guy is hot. They go shopping with them, they go into the dressing room with them. These women, in their mind, are exempted because they consider it a friendship. But it is bad boundaries."

Fran A. Sepler, president of Sepler & Associates, a Minneapolis firm that investigates harassment claims on behalf of employers, says she has examined about a dozen cases in recent years involving women harassing women. Often the situations are not explicitly sexual, she said.