As an activist, Gordon was a key proponent of the Woman Lawyer's Bill, which allowed women to practice law in California.

Gordon's February 19, 1868 speech in San Francisco, titled "The Elective Franchise: Who Shall Vote", was the first in California on the suffrage movement.

[16] At the 1872 Liberal Republican convention, alongside Susan B. Anthony, she asked the party to seat her as a representative from California (to "laughter") and submitted a pro-suffrage resolution.

[3] As a result of her suffrage and publishing work, Gordon was well known in California political circles, and even received 200 votes for State Senate in 1871.

[3]: 216  This positioned her, along with fellow suffragette Clara Shortridge Foltz, to manage the lobbying campaign for the Woman Lawyer's Bill, which granted women the right to practice law in California in January 1878.

[3] Despite not being elected as a delegate, during the convention, in February 1879, Gordon and Foltz successfully pushed for the inclusion of Article XX, Section 18, of the Constitution.

[24][6]: 53 At around the same time, in January 1879, Gordon and Foltz were briefly admitted to the recently opened Hastings College of the Law, and paid the $10 tuition.

[15] However, on the third day of classes, they were asked to leave, in part because the school's Dean felt their "rustling skirts" bothered the male students.

[2]: 21 In May 1879, Gordon left a copy of her pamphlet The Great Geysers of California and How to Reach Them in a time capsule buried in San Francisco's Washington Square park.

[27] Armistead Maupin, who was present when the time capsule was opened, speculated that the quotation's use of "lover of her own sex" could have been a "coming out" for Gordon, but also acknowledged the phrase could have been an "idiosyncrasy of 19th century speech".

[27] The quotation was later used in Randy Shilts' biography of gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, "Mayor of Castro Street".