It is too soon to know whether the unexpected outcome of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy will inspire more women to run or dampen their aspirations. But either way, it is clear that she has, through her campaigns and career, helped create a political environment in which a woman could come so close to winning the presidency.

What is less known is that Mrs. Clinton started changing that political culture for women as far back as the early 1970s — not through a candidacy of her own, but through a series of small, but crucial, networking moves.

The number of women who labored in basement meetings, in consciousness-raising groups, in boardrooms, in unions, in news organizations and in their own kitchens to expand possibilities for women are far too many to count. Far fewer, however, worked specifically to put women into elected office. Prominent among those who did were a few key friends of Mrs. Clinton whom she helped find paths to the cause, including a Texan political player named Betsey Wright, who Mrs. Clinton introduced to a classmate of hers from Wellesley College, Jan Piercy.

“In 1972, I was working at a temporary job at Filene’s Basement, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, when I got a call from Hillary,” recalled Ms. Piercy, who had devoted herself to antipoverty work at Wellesley, but not to feminism, per se. “And Hillary said, ‘We have to go to Washington tomorrow.’ So we jumped on a plane, and I’m ushered in to the National League of Women Voters headquarters, and Hillary tells them, ‘This can be your youth director.’”