She was scheduled to present her findings in a talk entitled “Gender, Economic Development and Human Rights” at Radcliffe this Monday, March 8, to coincide with International Women’s Day. Instead, approximately 100 friends and colleagues gathered for a commemorative service held in the Cronkhite Living Room.

Several of those who spoke at Monday’s service praised Okin’s teaching and willingness to mentor younger colleagues.

“There are at least three theorists who went into political theory because they had her as undergraduates,” Mansbridge said. “This is someone who affected many lives not only through her writing but through her caring response to her students and others.”

Several teaching awards she earned during her time at Stanford substantiate these claims.

Judith Vichniac, the director of Radcliffe’s fellowship program who has known Okin since they both entered graduate school at Harvard in 1972, spoke at Monday’s ceremony at Radcliffe.

Vichniac recalled that Okin “loved to garden, she loved to go antiquing, she loved to fix up houses, she loved to cook, she loved to dress up—she always dressed with a real flair.”

She also stressed the importance of family to Okin’s personal, moral and intellectual life.

Mansbridge also recalled that Okin was always eager to talk about her children, Laura and Justin.

“It was a wonderful mixture of being able to get to the very frontier of political theory in one breath and talk about my son and her family in the next,” Mansbridge said.

Okin was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and graduated from the University of Auckland in 1967. She earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Oxford in 1970 and a doctorate from Harvard in 1975.

Before taking her position at Stanford, Okin taught at the University of Auckland, Vassar, Brandeis and Harvard.

Her ties to Cambridge were strong. According to Vichniac, Okin used Radcliffe 25th reunion reports as material for some of her research.

In 1990, Okin delivered the Radcliffe Alumnae Lecture, and in 2000 she was presented with the Radcliffe Graduate Society Medal for academic achievement, awarded to a woman with a graduate degree from Harvard who has made an outstanding contribution to her field.

Okin had recently purchased a condo in Lincoln and hoped to be able to spend part of every year in the Boston area. She had also bought a house in the south of France.

Okin is survived by a daughter, Laura Moller Okin of Boston; a son, Justin Moller Okin of New York; and two sisters, Janice May of England and Catherine Pitt of New Zealand.

Family and friends gathered at Okin’s home in Lincoln on March 7 to commemorate her life.

A memorial celebration will be held at Stanford this spring and will be followed by a conference honoring Okin’s scholarship. The family requests that donations in Okin’s memory be made to the Global Fund for Women, 1375 Sutter St., Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94109.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Ella A. Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@fas.harvard.edu.