[2][3] She received the Brown Medal award for earning the highest grades of all the girls in her graduating class.

[3] Laughlin's first job was working at a china imports office as a bookkeeper where she made four dollars a week.

[2] Before graduation, she gave a speech to members of the Agora Society on the Wilson tariff bill that was published on the front cover of the American Economist by the Home Market Bulletin.

[2] After working at the American Economist for two years, Gail saved enough money to apply to Cornell Law School.

[3] She was offered and accepted a job by Colonel Albert Clark, the man responsible for publishing her speech in the American Economist, to inspect the working conditions of domestic servants with the United States Industrial Commission.

[3] After two years of research she published a twenty-eight-page report for the United States Industrial Commission outlining the injustices that women of multiple demographics faced in domestic service.

[3] Laughlin learned that women were being paid less than men for equal work and faced many unreasonable demands.

[3] In 1919, Laughlin traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to attend the first convention of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs of which she was a co-founder.

She was elected as the president of National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs at the end of the convention.

[3] She and 200 others traveled to the Rapid City, South Dakota, to corner President Coolidge and get a massive amount of media attention.

[2][3] The goal was to get the bill into the next session, but President Coolidge announced he wouldn't be running for a second term and did not provide any support.

The Women's Literacy Union drafted a petition with 1,000 signatures on it for Laughlin to run for the Maine Legislature.

[2][3] She worked successfully to raise the minimum marriage age of girls from thirteen to sixteen and passed an act preventing the wrongful commitment of women into mental institutions.