Some power doesn’t need a title.
It does not require a campaign, a ballot box, a government office, or a political party.
It does not always announce itself. Sometimes it arrives in rhinestones and a blonde wig. Sometimes it comes with a microphone, a magazine, or a television camera. Sometimes it sits quietly in a boardroom, building a business and changing an industry.
Lately, I have been thinking about women and power.
The recent passing of Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem brought that question to mind. I also think about Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Bates, both of whom are celebrating 40 years in business. Four very different women. Four very different paths. Yet each understood something fundamental.
Power is not simply about the position you hold. It is about what you do with the influence you have.
And I cannot help but wonder:
What if Dolly or Gloria had held political office? What if Oprah had decided to run for president? What if Barbara had taken her business acumen into government?
Imagine it.
The world might look very different.
Dolly Parton was, on the surface, a down-home country girl. But underneath that big blonde hair, makeup, rhinestones, and country persona was a remarkably sophisticated woman who understood people, business, and the power of a good story.
I have always been fascinated by the story Dolly told about seeing a woman in town when she was a little girl — a woman other people called “trashy.” Dolly didn’t see trash. She saw glamour. She liked the woman’s look and eventually developed her own unmistakable public persona from that early impression.
Dolly understood something many people never learn: you can create your own image without allowing the world to define you.
But her greatest accomplishment may not have been her music or her entertainment empire. It was what she did with her success.
Her Imagination Library put books in children’s hands, giving young people the chance to discover the world through reading. Her father, she said, could not read or write, and that personal history gave the program especially powerful meaning.
Then there was Dollywood.
Dolly did not simply build an amusement park. She created jobs, tourism, and economic activity in her home region. She took something associated with entertainment and turned it into economic development. She invested in her community.
That is power.
Not power for power’s sake. Power used for purpose.
Then there was Gloria Steinem.
Steinem came from a difficult childhood and took on responsibilities at a young age, including caring for her mother. She became a journalist and one of the most recognizable voices of the modern women’s movement.
She helped create a women’s magazine that treated women as thinking citizens rather than simply consumers of recipes, fashion, and homemaking advice.
She insisted that women had something to say about politics, economics, work, education, reproductive rights, and their own lives. She described herself as an “entrepreneur of social change.”
Steinem helped move women from what society had defined as the “minority” position into the political majority.
And that was no small thing.
Not so long ago, a woman could not simply walk into a financial institution and expect to be treated as an independent economic citizen. Credit, mortgages, and other financial decisions could require a man’s signature or backing.
The feminist movement challenged that system.
Women stood up.
Sometimes they protested. Sometimes they marched. Sometimes they burned bras—a dramatic symbol of rejecting the limitations placed on them.
But the larger issue was not the bra.
It was freedom.
Gloria helped women understand that citizenship meant more than having the right to vote. It meant having the right to make decisions about your own life.
For that, women today owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.
And then I think about my own experience as a young Black woman.
As a college student, I volunteered in the civil rights movement and worked with the late Rev. Jesse Jackson. The movement I knew was largely led by Black men. At the same time, I was learning about the women’s movement.
There was conversation. There was confusion. There were questions.
Which struggle came first?
Which movement deserved your attention?
Where could you have the greatest impact?
For a Black woman, the question could be complicated. You were Black in America, and you were a woman in America. You occupied both spaces, but the movements didn’t always make it easy to do both at the same time.
I remember the late Rev. Willie Barrow, a powerful force in the Black freedom movement, being seriously approached by the feminist movement to take on an active leadership role.
Rev. Barrow understood that she did not have to abandon one struggle to participate in another.
She did both.
But even she understood the political reality of the time. In public speeches, she could consciously choose what to emphasize: the plight of women or the plight of Black people.
That tension has not completely disappeared.
Perhaps that is because power has always been complicated for women — and particularly for Black women.
Then came Oprah.
Oprah Winfrey did not need a political office to become one of the most influential women in America.
She built a media empire with questions.
She sparked conversations that millions watched. She made books into bestsellers. She gave people platforms. She changed the television landscape. She turned personal storytelling into a cultural force and transformed that influence into business power and philanthropy. Her curious mind led her to riches beyond her dreams.
Imagine Oprah sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.
Imagine Dolly Parton standing at a podium in the Senate.
Imagine Gloria Steinem running a congressional committee.
Imagine Barbara Bates bringing four decades of business experience into public policy.
Would they have changed government?
Maybe.
But they already changed America.
That is the point.
We sometimes measure leadership by the wrong things.
We look at who won the election, who occupies the office, who has the title and who gets to sit at the table.
But history often tells another story.
Some of the most consequential people never held public office.
They changed what people believed was possible.
Dolly Parton said, in effect, that you could come from the mountains of Tennessee, wear big hair and rhinestones, build a global entertainment career — and still remember the children who needed a book.
Gloria Steinem said women did not have to remain in the back seat of American life.
Oprah demonstrated that a Black woman could build an enormous media and business enterprise while making her own voice the center of the conversation.
And women like Barbara Bates remind us that building a business for 40 years is itself an act of leadership, persistence, and power with pretty dresses. She remembered the prom teens who didn’t have anything to wear and gave them couture dressing.
I never met Dolly or Gloria. I wish I had. Oprah is on my to-do list.
I would have wanted to ask them what they thought power really meant.
Was it influence?
Was it money?
Was it access?
Was it the ability to change a law?
Or was it the ability to change a mind?
Perhaps it is all of those things.
But I believe the greatest power is the power to create change that outlives you.
Dolly did that. Gloria did that. Oprah is doing that. And women across America are doing it every day — in businesses, classrooms, churches, newsrooms, families, nonprofits, communities and government.
So yes, I wonder what America would have looked like if Dolly Parton or Gloria Steinem had held political office.
But perhaps the more important question is this:
What would America look like if more women understood that they already possess political power — even without a political title?
Women are among the most powerful voting blocs in America. Women influence families, communities, culture, education, business and public opinion.
The question is not whether women have power. The question is what we, choose to do with it.
Dolly used hers to educate children, and Gloria used hers to give women a voice. Oprah used hers to create opportunity, conversation, and economic power.
Generations of women have followed.
They did not wait for permission.
They did not wait for a title.
They built.
They spoke.
They organized.
They invested.
They challenged.
They changed.
That is women’s power.
And perhaps the greatest tribute we can give these extraordinary women is not simply to remember what they accomplished.
It is to ask ourselves what we will do with the power they helped us understand we have. I have been influenced by them all, proudly I tell you.
