She succeeded in administering progressive ideas for change to the magazine's readers, growing support for her desires during the women's suffrage movement.

[2] Among the most notable pieces published in The Forerunner are the three novels of Gilman's feminist utopian trilogy, Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916).

Herland, the most famous of these books, presents an all-women society in which women reproduce themselves through parthenogenesis, and the female value of nurturing is upheld by the community.

Gilman used The Forerunner as the venue for other major works, including Man-Made World (1911) and her novels What Diantha Did (1909–10), The Crux (1911), Mag-Marjorie (1912), Won Over (1913), and Begnina Machiavelli (1914).

According to Cane and Alves, “The short fiction written and published by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her magazine, The Forerunner (1909–16), concerns ordinary women who deflect the traditional trajectories of their lives to create better situations for themselves and, in so doing, improve the lives of those around them.”[4] Forerunner not only fought to contradict the popular media of the time, but also proposed new ideas on the place of women in society.

By perpetuating a diverse collection of ideas in her writings, Gilman wrote to address and effect the main issue she believed was adversely impacting the nation.

The solutions offered for the problems Gilman believed faced women were not ones of rebellion and fast-paced revolution, but realistic subtle changes which would not intimidate the reader.

Gilman argued that, “The liberation of women- and of children and men, for that matter- required getting women out of the house, both practically and ideologically.”[6] The articles were mainly stories of fiction which were more relatable to her audience at the time, and useful in contrasting the writings in other popular media outlets.

Gilman took a conservative, slow-going approach to social change for two main reasons: First, she adhered to the notion that social change was based on the scientific evidence of evolution and she understood the evolutionary process to be gradual; second, as an observer of the suffrage campaigns undertaken within her lifetime, she had learned that the less radical approaches were the ones that won adherents, while more revolutionary schemes frightened and alienated many middle- class women.