Did you miss a session at the Data Summit? Harassment in the workplace affects employees of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, and ethnicities -- but disproportionately those in under-represented groups. A 2018 survey by Stop Street Harassment showed that 81% of women have been harassed in their lifetime. And according to a UCLA School of Law study, half of LGBTQ workers have faced job discrimination at some point in their careers. Work-from-home arrangements during the pandemic haven't slowed or reversed the trend -- in fact, they've accelerated it.

Welcome to Pushing Buttons, the Guardian's gaming newsletter. If you'd like to receive it in your inbox every week, just pop your email in below – and check your inbox (and spam) for the confirmation email. If you've followed gaming news over the past couple of years, it has been impossible to avoid the many appalling stories about workplace harassment and discrimination that have emerged as part of a long-overdue reckoning in the games industry. As a woman who's worked in the games media for over 15 years, I can only say that I have been grimly unsurprised by the revelations. The consequences that women face for speaking out on these issues has meant that until recently, few were willing to do so publicly.

Post #MeToo, employers have become increasingly focused on tackling harassment. In fact, it was recently reported that some companies are implementing monitoring software that uses AI to detect online harassment at work. The technology is said to use algorithms that recognise harassing or bullying language within internal worker emails and online chats, which are then flagged to HR for investigation. But is this really the correct tool to combat workplace harassment? And are there better ways for employers to protect workers?

Over the past two years, the world has learned through a series of dramatic media revelations that harassment and discrimination reporting mechanisms are broken. And it's not just women who are hurting. People of colour, people who identify openly as LGBTQi, those who are disabled and many others are being disproportionately targeted and urgently need better ways to speak up. In 2019 we will use AI to monitor what employees are doing, not just to detect fraud, but for signs of bias and discrimination, overcoming some of the biggest barriers to identifying and reporting harassment and discrimination. Using natural language processing, AI will scan emails for inappropriate words and phrases and flag problem makers.

With all the headlines on gender diversity, workplace harassment and equal pay, have we come a long way, baby? International Women's Day, which is Thursday, is a good time to look at this question. Studies show that having more women in senior management jobs improves the financial performance of companies. And having more female members of company boards helps companies deal more effectively with risk and brings other benefits as well. Despite this, there has been scant progress in increasing the number of women in leadership roles in the past 10 years.

Sexual harassment has made plenty of headlines in recent months, but more often than not, bad behavior doesn't happen in the spotlight. As Oprah said in her Golden Globes Lifetime Achievement speech, sexual harassment happens in factories and in fields everywhere, to people of all colors, classes, and creeds. In the modern office, there is one type of harassment that HR teams could solve using the very same innovation that enables it. I'm speaking, of course, of the kind that happens regularly online over Slack, Skype, or work computers. For sexual harassment that occurs in cyberspace -- and, like bullying, it often does -- technological solutions like AI could be the savior victims didn't know they needed.