It is beginning to look as if not a single industry will escape allegations of sexual harassment – something that will not, of course, come as a surprise to most working women. The explosive allegations of sexual assault by the film producer Harvey Weinstein, spanning several decades, have become a huge talking point because his victims are well-known names. And this has led to an outpouring, in Hollywood and far beyond.

At the weekend, Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the Royal Court, held a “day of action”, which included a stage reading, lasting over five hours, of more than 150 testimonies of sexual harassment within the theatre industry; she is now drawing up an industry code of conduct. The director Max Stafford-Clark was forced out of his theatre company, Out of Joint, after young female colleagues reported sexual comments he had made to them (“Back in the day, I’d have been up you like a rat up a drainpipe,” he allegedly said to one female employee, in her 20s at the time). When this emerged, actor Tracy Ann Oberman wrote she had a “sense that chickens were coming home to roost in this post-Weinstein world”, detailing her own humiliating and upsetting experiences with Stafford-Clark 25 years ago.

Vicky Featherstone, Royal Court artistic director: drawing up a new code of conduct for the theatre industry. Photograph: Paul Cooper/REX/Shutterstock

At the BBC, a Five Live commentator has been suspended over a sexual harassment claim, and another broadcaster is being investigated. Within the art world, 2,000 people, including artists, curators and museum directors, signed a letter in protest against sexual harassment, in the wake of the resignation last week of an influential art publisher who had been subject to accusations. The charity Oxfam is investigating allegations of sexual harassment and exploitation, with one director having already been dismissed.

The fashion world, which up until now has largely ignored the shocking, detailed reports made by models about the behaviour of photographer Terry Richardson, suddenly decided he was not to be trusted any more – a leaked email from publishing giant Condé Nast said he should no longer be employed by their magazines, including Vogue. Women within the music industry have started speaking out about sexual assault and harassment, too.

Stories about senior politicians, running from sexual assault and blackmail to inappropriate “jokes”, have emerged, and yesterday the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq said the number of cases could run into “the hundreds”. This has “gone past gossip” she told the BBC, “this is a serious problem”.

Actor Terry Crews: wrote on Twitter that he had been assaulted by an unnamed Hollywood executive. Photograph: Salangs/Variety/REX/Shutterstock

This isn’t something perpetrated only by men against women; in situations where there has been a clear power differential, men and boys have been victims, too. James Van Der Beek wrote on Twitter about his experiences as a young actor with “older, powerful men … there’s a power dynamic that feels impossible to overcome.” The actor and former NFL player Terry Crews also wrote on Twitter, in the wake of the Weinstein allegations, that he had been assaulted by an unnamed Hollywood executive. And actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Kevin Spacey had made sexual advances towards him when he was just 14. Spacey responded that he didn’t remember the encounter, “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour.”

There has been an outpouring, an unravelling, stories shared on WhatsApp groups, urgent whispers in corridors, rumours becoming allegations. Have we been here before or does all this feel different? Is it, as Naomi Wolf wrote this month, a “rend in the fabric of patriarchy”? Featherstone echoed this phrase, saying she feels optimistic that we have reached a point of no return, “we have got to the top of a mountain, and a rip has been torn in the patriarchy. I’m not saying it will all be solved, but things will never be the same again.”

“What worries me is how quickly things return to normal,” says the writer and activist Joan Smith. “We have been in similar situations in the past. I’m just hoping that this time – because it’s not just limited to one institution – it’s spreading out much more widely and it might actually be a watershed.”

Campaigner Nimco Ali: ‘It has happened to white, well-known women and people are taking note.’ Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian

We have been here before – Savile, Rochdale, Rotherham and other gross acts of abuse against some of the most vulnerable people – and the world hasn’t noticeably changed, has it? “Absolutely,” says Joanna Bourke, professor of history at Birkbeck College and author of Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present. “Feminists have been fighting this issue ever since feminism began. You can see it before the 18th century, but certainly from the 18th century onwards sexual violence and harassment have been really big [issues] for women. I do think however that there have been major changes and improvements, especially in law in terms of what is appropriate. I don’t think patriarchy is going to end but it is an important point – the ability and the increasing willingness to go public is really important because one of the problems we always have when it comes to these issues are the aspects of shame and [the idea that] somehow the person who is affected by it is somehow responsible. The fact that more people are talking about it is a fantastic turning point.”

However, she adds, “one of the reasons why there is a discussion about it is because the women who have come forward are influential, believable, well-known and privileged, in terms of class and status. It still remains formidably difficult for minority groups, poor women, women who are regarded or believed to be less attractive than others to come forward and talk about these things.”

Many women’s organisations are closing or facing closure due to cutbacks

The campaigner Nimco Ali, co-founder of the Daughters of Eve project, says perhaps the reason it feels different this time is “it has happened to white, well-known women [and] people are taking note. I think that’s the thing – if it happened to that person then it must be true. Jimmy Savile had power and people covered up for him; in the Rotherham case, nobody really cared about white working-class girls.”

Photographs of attractive, famous women – Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cara Delevingne – have accompanied the Weinstein story. “Nobody would care if they were poor, unattractive women. It’s selling newspapers and everybody else is reading it. I think it’s quite depressing in that sense. I think the only reason we’re talking about it is because it’s in the press, and the only reason it’s in the press is because attractive women are being sexualised again and again.”

Ali says she hadn’t even thought about it as the beginning of the end of patriarchy. “I think that’s wishful thinking. Is it an impetus to do something? Maybe. It’s [about] saying now it’s come to the forefront, are we going to do something about it or are we going to sensationalise it?”

Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters, says this moment is certainly important. “The problem is not women coming forward but how institutions respond to that and we still have a long way to go in terms of ensuring there are the resources, including women’s organisations that can effectively support women through quite traumatic experiences. Many women’s organisations are closing or facing closure due to cutbacks. I’m particularly concerned about black and minority women who live in some of the most marginalised, hard-to-reach communities, where sexual harassment and sexual violence is still very much taboo. They particularly need to come forward, but the specialist organisations for BAME women are closing at an alarming rate due to lack of funds. So it’s a really contradictory situation in which we find ourselves – a blow for patriarchy but it’s not going to be the nail in the coffin until the state also gives commitment to providing the resources needed to ensure that when women come forward they are supported. Sadly, the culture of disbelief prevails in institutions, sexual violence and abuse is still trivialised and so we still have a long way to go.”

She thinks it is significant that the outpouring has spread from the largely US-based entertainment industry, to Britain’s theatre and art world, the BBC, charities and parliament; WhatsApp groups share stories of harassment in journalism, too. “It does feel like this is a really important moment that everyone who cares about the rights of women and girls should really grasp, and that means condemning such actions but also providing the resources to ensure that when women do finally come forward, they are actually helped in meaningful ways. It may well be a turning point in relation to the institutional culture of sexual harassment, but we cannot use this moment to create a culture of expectancy and then not meet needs.”

Law professor Anita Hill, who in 1991 made allegations of sexual harassment against the US supreme court nominee Clarence Thomas. Photograph: Sipa Press/REX/Shutterstock

In the US, a conversation about sexual harassment has gone on for more than a quarter of a century, bookended by two events. In 1991, Anita Hill – a law professor – testified before an all-male panel of senators after making allegations of sexual harassment against her former boss Clarence Thomas, who had been nominated to the supreme court. This young African-American woman spoke confidently and defiantly. Thomas denied the allegations and was confirmed to the supreme court that year. Hill was dismissed in public as a “scorned woman”, and worse.

“What happened as a result of that was people began to talk about sexual harassment in a way they never had before,” says Michael Kimmel, professor of sociology and gender studies at Stony Brook University. “My mother told me about being sexually harassed when she was in graduate school. Many people told their parents, their children, their partners that this had happened to them. These were private conversations, but nothing public because of the way [Hill] was treated.”

Twenty-five years later, a 2005 tape emerged during the US presidential campaign in which Donald Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women. There was horror at his comments, but it ultimately didn’t harm him – with 53% of white women voters opting for him. Last week, the White House press secretary was asked about the allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump by at least 16 women, and she reiterated Trump’s view that it was “fake news”, and that the women were lying.

“This time, it feels a little bit different,” says Kimmel. “It feels like the women are being believed publicly, and women are lining up to talk about this. I think this is another moment in the long progression of the renegotiation of the relationship between women and men at work. This is about the entitlement felt by men in power that they can do these sorts of things. We’ve witnessed over the past 25 years the gradual believing of women when they tell these stories.”

But the beginning of the end of patriarchy? Hardly, says Kimmel. “There is another element to this case. It’s not simply the behaviour of these predatory, powerful men, it’s also the enabling of them by other men. The key player in the Trump case was Billy Bush – had he said to Trump, ‘That’s disgusting, not to mention illegal’, Trump would not have been so quick to brag about sexual assault … Yes, it’s true that that sense of male entitlement may be eroding as these women come forward, but as long as that part of patriarchy continues – where some men enable other men – it will continue.”

“We need to remember how long-term and embedded these problems are,” says Bourke. “And how things change really slowly.” Perhaps the immediacy and clamour of social media has fooled us into thinking we’re at a tipping point, rather than something ephemeral that might burn out. Social media has been great for feminism, she says, and particularly in the context of sexual assault and harassment “because it has enabled people to get in touch and realise they’re not alone. But in terms of a political response, that’s not going far enough.”

But then you look at an organisation such as Everyday Sexism and see the vast archive of sexual harassment women have endured. “I had absolutely no idea that it would snowball in the way that it has,” says its founder Laura Bates. “What’s happened, with several hundred thousand stories, has taken me completely by surprise.” This recent outpouring of stories, she says, “is the most incredible show of solidarity, strength and collective action, but women alone sharing their stories don’t have the power to change things. What really needs to change is men’s behaviour and structural, systemic, organisational inequality.”

This moment has the potential to be important, she says, but “I’d even be cautious about labelling this as a tipping point. What we’ve seen is incredible courage and strength on the part of many women, and some men, in coming forward and sharing their stories in an environment in which it’s incredibly difficult to do so, and that has the potential to push it in the right direction, but whether it will or not depends on what happens next. What really matters is how we respond to the courage of those people who have come forward – do we tackle institutional and ingrained inequality, do we start as individuals challenging this behaviour instead of turning a blind eye, do organisations from businesses to schools and universities take this as the moment to put in place genuinely radical strategies for tackling this? Or do we all talk about it in the media, act shocked and appalled, and then wait a few weeks for it to die down and then go on exactly as we were before?”