“There’s a teeny silver lining,” Ms. Lapidus said about the deluge of allegations. “It’s reached such a crescendo that there’s no going back.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Weinstein, who was fired by the studio he co-founded, has repeatedly denied “any allegations of nonconsensual sex.”

The ArcLight, an upscale movie theater and event space in the heart of Hollywood, was simultaneously hosting a premiere for “Jigsaw,” which Lionsgate hopes will restart its “Saw” franchise. As women at Ms. Silverstein’s gathering cited statistics about gender inequality in moviedom — women buy 50 percent of movie tickets in the United States, but only 7 percent of the 250 top-grossing films in 2016 were directed by women — several dryly noted that it seemed appropriate to have a torture-themed horror movie as a backdrop.

One honoree, Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at the University of Southern California and author of damning reports about gender discrimination in the movie and television business, called Hollywood “a cesspool of humanity.” But Ms. Smith had high praise for Ms. Silverstein, whom she referred to as the entertainment industry’s “chief agitation officer.”

Ms. Silverstein, who grew up on Long Island and works from her Brooklyn apartment, has long focused on women’s causes. After graduating from Brandeis University in 1989 and earning a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1993, she worked for organizations like the Ms. Foundation and the White House Project, a now-defunct nonprofit dedicated to increasing female representation in business and government.