By forcing the world to become more aware of the daily sexual abuse of women, the #MeToo movement became a social revolution of historic importance. His legacy is still being determined.

It started with a tweet: On October 15, 2017, US actress Alyssa Milano invited women to share their experiences of sexual harassment under the words “Me too”.

According to the Pew Research Center, the hashtag was used more than 19 million times within a year, putting sexual assault at the top of the global agenda.

Of course, the movement sat on the shoulders of decades of feminist struggles — even the phrase “Me Too” was a decade old, created by activist Tarana Burke for a charity aimed at abuse survivors.

It caught fire in the wake of a New York Times explosive investigation into film producer Harvey Weinstein, who it turned out had raped and assaulted women, many in the industry, for years and gotten away with it.

A reckoning ensued for many powerful figures in the entertainment industry.

Kevin Spacey was dropped from House of Cards and Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World was remade to have another actor in his place.

The bosses of Amazon Studios, Fox News, CBS and Vox Media were squeezed out.

Actor James Franco, opera singer Placido Domingo, comedian Louis CK, fashion photographer Terry Richardson, celebrity chef Mario Batali – hardly a week went by without another illustrious name being shamed.

The most serious allegations led to jail terms for previously untouchable figures: Bill Cosby, once considered “America’s father,” singer R. Kelly, and ultra-connected financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The pressure spread beyond the entertainment business to involve politicians, sports stars and big tech companies like Google and Uber.

His strength lay in making visible what was always in view.

“#MeToo showed that sexual and sexist violence was a commonplace reality, that it was mundane,” said Sandrine Ricci, a sociologist at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

“The movement allowed people, especially the victims, to better understand what was being done to them.”

The epicenter was the United States, but the aftershocks were global.

As abuse cases surfaced, they were harder to ignore, whether it was a Serbian drama teacher accused of rape, abuse by ultra-Orthodox leaders in Israel, or a “sex for grades” scandal at a Moroccan university.

The Pew study found that a third of first-year #MeToo tweets were in a non-English language — seven percent in Afrikaans, four percent in Somali — along with regional variants like #YoTambien in Spanish or #BalanceTonPorc (“Betray your pig”) in French.

“People were surprised – they didn’t realize how common sexual harassment is,” said Hillevi Ganetz of Stockholm University.

“Evidence came out day in and day out, it was overwhelming,” she added. “It was a revolution and it was wonderful.”

The backlash was almost immediate.

By its very nature, #MeToo targeted behaviors that were often difficult to prove in court, leading to accusations that people were being “cancelled” without proper investigation.

Some feared it would spell the end of flirting — that it might take the stress out of sexual tension.

French film icon Catherine Deneuve was one who spoke out against the movement’s “puritanical” streak, which threatened to make women “perpetual victims.”

The debate inevitably fell down the toilet bowl of the online culture wars — exemplified by the militant partisanship in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial earlier this year.

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai’s three-week disappearance after she accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of forcing her to have sex showed the seriousness that resistance could take.

But even France — the scene of mass protests over the issue — has a president in Emmanuel Macron who has appointed at least three ministers bearing sexual assault allegations.

As the first waves of the movement ebb, the difficult task of fostering societal change has taken over.

“We are still a long way from finding solutions,” said Florence Rochefort of France’s National Center for Scientific Research.

With the world locked in economic and climate crises, “the timing is not good to solve social problems,” she added.

Laws against rape have been tightened in many places, including Sweden in 2018 and Spain last year.

Companies around the world have implemented training and are no longer sweeping complaints under the rug.

Times Up, which campaigns against abuse in the film industry, is setting up a panel of experts to hear complaints, much like standard-setting bodies do for doctors, teachers and other professionals.

Such ideas cut both ways – they provide a clear mechanism that encourages people to come forward while confronting those who claim the accused were found guilty without due process.

“We want to avoid media court cases,” said the group’s UK leader, Heather Rabbatts.

“It doesn’t help anyone.”