I wouldn't dismiss the butterfly effect so quickly. She was certainly early in this wave, and the cumulative inertia has to be part of why things ended up as they are.
Edit: The reason I find Fowler somewhat unique is that her background, credentials, writing skills, etc, made her hard to dismiss. It was very believable, perhaps to some that might have tended to challenge similar stories.
So it seemed to open a door for women that had similar stories, but not the same level of gravitas. It also primed the media to pay attention to this area.
That, to me, indicates that something else shifted culturally to allow the Uber thing to help contribute to that environment. What is that? Was it the scale of Uber? Was it something about Fowler? Was it that the same power dynamics that suppressed revelations about Weinstein were starting to degrade within insular tech? I'm personally curious about it, and I don't think Fowler's blog post was solely responsible and folks should start making conclusions about cultural shifts, is my only point.
Edit to your edit: Careful; you're lightly claiming that accusers before Fowler were unbelievable and easily dismissed.
Heh. Hopefully I'm given the benefit of the doubt on that. She bordered on unassailable, which is difficult to do when recounting anything.
Edit: Ugh, really? You're reading something that isn't there.