On Oct. 10, 1911, male voters passed the California Women’s Vote Amendment by a slight majority, granting California women the right to vote in state elections. Following the win, suffragists and supporters of both sexes erupted in celebratory parades, rallies, street speeches and press coverage events from San Diego to Sacramento. The celebratory atmosphere following that vote 100 years ago will be re-created at the California Suffrage Centennial Celebration parade hosted by the Women’s Museum on Aug. 25. Modern-day suffragists and supporters can dress in vintage garb, listen to rousing speeches and music and carry festive banners, signs and flags to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Californian women’s right to vote. The parade will begin at 5 p.m. at the Kate Sessions statue on Laurel Street and 6th Avenue. Participants will march across the Cabrillo Bridge to the Organ Pavilion where they will be met by a San Diego Women’s Drum Society drum roll, an old-fashioned picnic and ice cream social on the Hall of Nations lawn and the sounds of the Marine Band San Diego in the final Twilight in the Park concert of the year. In addition to the parade, the Women’s Museum will host a California Suffrage Centennial Celebration ball at the Balboa Park Club on Oct. 29. The old-fashioned ball will begin at 6:30 p.m. and feature music, food and dances from the early 20th century to celebrate the passage of a great feat for women. Women’s right to vote in the United States was a process more than 70 years in the making. The idea of women’s suffrage was initially proposed at the first women’s rights convention in 1848. Not until 1920 was the right to vote granted across all states in the union. California marked the sixth and largest state to grant women that right. Despite their achievement on the state level, California women knew their job was not over. San Diego suffragists toured around the county in automobiles spreading their message and garnering support for the national Women’s Vote Amendment. According to Ashley Gardner, director of the Women’s Museum, San Diego politics played an important role in the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ultimately granting women the right to vote across the United States. An exhibit illustrating San Diego’s role in the suffrage movement, including a vintage car from 1909 in the same style used by California suffragists to spread their message, will be on display in San Diego City Hall’s lobby during the last week in October. The advancement of women’s rights has certainly come a long way in 100 years, said museum member and volunteer Rosalie Schwartz. “Did the men who voted for the Equal Suffrage Amendment in 1911 foresee women running for the nation’s presidency, sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, running state governments, serving in the Cabinet, effectively commanding military personnel and fulfilling a myriad other positions of civic responsibility and duty?” Schwartz said. “Maybe they anticipated the benefits for California and the country when they voted, ‘yes.’ Maybe they simply recognized the fairness of civic equality.” Despite tremendous leaps and bounds for women’s rights in the United States, San Diego leaders will not sell short in their fight for women’s equality. “One hundred years later, women still earn on average 77 cents for every dollar a man makes,” said Anne Hoiberg, president of both the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Museum of California. “We’re still fighting for equal pay in 2011.” She added that women’s representation in politics is under par, with a mere 27 percent representation in the California Senate, 26 percent in the California Assembly and 26 percent in the U.S. House of Representatives. “With so many talented women in California, all of us need to recruit, support and elect more women at all levels of government,” she said. “Our goal should be 50-50 by 2020.” For more information about California Suffrage Centennial Celebration events, visit www.womensmuseumca.org or call (619) 233-7963. Tickets to the ball are $40-$60 and will be available on the museum’s website. Entrance to the parade is free.