Museum Exhibit Celebrates Sonoma County’s Women Pioneers

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The unique and powerful contributions of Sonoma County women are front and center in a new exhibit at the Museum of Sonoma County that traces American women’s fight for equality over the past 100 years.

Hundreds turned out Friday night for the exhibit’s unveiling, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendent, which granted women the right to vote nationwide.

Entitled from Suffrage to #MeToo, a series of carefully curated displays trace the role of Sonoma County women in overcoming barriers to equal rights, and in pushing the boundaries of what was considered acceptable behavior at the time.

The exhibit showcases the contributions of more than a dozen local women, from Alice Gray who helped found the Sonoma County chapter of the NAACP, to Helen Rudee, the first woman elected to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, to Judy Sakaki, the current president of Sonoma State who is the first Japanese American woman to sit at the helm of a four year university.

The groundbreaking exhibit drew on extensive local archives, and curators say was designed to trace the continuing struggle for womens’ equality that continues in the era of the #MeToo movement.