I don't know why you are so eager to think people don't have agency or can't influence society. So many things change all the time. Just one example - twenty years ago most gay people lived in secret, because being out was a huge problem for society; the idea of gay marriage was ridiculously distant. Today, in most places, it's seen as a non-issue.

That didn't happen by chance. It happened because of the hard dedicated work of a lot of people, who convinced society to see things differently, and won.