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surfing’s trailblazing females

Surfing may be an individual sport but when faced with overwhelming inequality, a band of renegade female champions put aside any rivalry to fight for their rights. They share their stories of battling discrimination, bigotry and even violence with Beverley Hadgraft.

In 2018, a photograph of two junior surfing champions, proudly holding their winners’ cheques went viral. The female winner, Zoe Steyn, had won $400; the first-placed male, Rio Waida, twice that.

Facebook erupted. Did the girls surf an easier ocean we don’t know about? What are we teaching our girls through this archaic discrimination? Do I get 50 per cent discount from (sponsor) Billabong because I’m only worth half as much?

The World Surf League (WSL) rolled out its excuses but suddenly there was a tsunami of stories detailing decades of the inequality and bigotry suffered by female competitors. Shortly after came an announcement: From 2019, women would receive the same prize money as men.

For a group of tough, talented, renegade women it was the victory they’d been fighting for since surfing turned professional in the 1980s. “I started crying when I heard it on the radio. I was so happy,” recalls 1983 world title holder Pauline Menczer. She’s one of the pioneer female athletes sharing their wit, grit and vintage video and photos in a new film documenting that fight, Girls Can’t Surf.

Pauline is the epitome of the Aussie battler. One of four children raised by her widowed mum after her dad was murdered, she learned to surf on half a board after her brother snapped his in two. She collected cans or sold towels she found on Sydney’s Bondi beach to buy her own board so was used to living on the breadline.

Even so she was shocked by the lack of funds for women on the professional circuit compared to men. During 20 years of competition, she was a constant presence on the world’s podiums yet reveals, “I worked out if I’d been a checkout chick instead, I’d have earned more.”

Men had sponsors falling over themselves to provide equipment. “I’d use the same wetsuit and board for up to three years,” says Pauline. “I had wetsuits with holes in them. Once, to make a stand I thought: ‘I’m going to wear this wetsuit until it absolutely falls apart. Still, no one offered me a wetsuit.”

She presumed once she won her world title, her fortunes would change. However, even the trophy she was handed for being the best female surfer on the planet was broken. “Yes, it seems incredible. But that’s how it was for women back then.”

Sponsors meanwhile told her that, being small, dark-haired and frecklefaced, she didn’t have the look that

they wanted to display in their advertisements. In those pre-social media days, even her inspiring story was worthless – including the fact she suffered rheumatoid arthritis so severe that a week before her world title win she was wheeled around in a shopping trolley because she couldn’t walk.

That the women continued to compete professionally at all is testament to their determination. Surfers had to travel the world to compete, paying their own airfares. But the four women talking today to The Weekly tell us that – unlike their male counterparts – the fear of being stranded or not finding anywhere to stay was constant. Many slept in board bags in competition tents.

“The men earned so much they were staying in ritzy hotels on the beach and could afford to fly home to Australia to refuel, refocus and rest,” explains big wave great Jodie Cooper.

“We had to live overseas 10 months of the year because we couldn’t afford to fly home. It was before the days of mobiles and AirBnB so we’d rock up and knock on doors and ask: ‘Any accommodation?’ then shack down with mates or on a friend’s couch.”

The film flashes up a succession of balance sheets, revealing how women’s winnings were a tenth of those awarded to men which is, of course, nothing new. The road to female sporting glory is congested with stories of men commanding more pay, perks and respect than their female counterparts. An average male AFL player, for instance, earns far more than an entire women’s team combined.

However, the issues for female surfers were particularly difficult. Without cash they couldn’t compete. When they did compete the men never let them surf until conditions had deteriorated so badly, they couldn’t show how good they were. On top of that they endured physical and verbal violence.

All the women here today experienced it, but everyone pales when they recount the time Jodie was attacked by the terrifying Mike Tyson of surfing, Johnny Boy Gomes. Other surfers knew to turn the other way when they saw the Hawaiian harassing someone. Jodie told him to chill out and was punched in the head, and Johnny continued to harass her for the next two years. “It was stressful,” she admits, and that’s from someone who once dismissed her hand being mauled by a shark as like “being worried by a dog with a big head”.

And yet, says Jodie, it was difficult to make a fuss. “You didn’t want to be seen as a whingey girl. You had to be careful about sponsorship because as a woman, even now it’s really hard to get unless you’re a bombshell. You’ll see a male athlete who looks like a robber’s dog, but he can still make money and not have his nose photoshopped. If you’re a female with athletic thighs, people want to have a go at you.”

The 1990 World Champion Pam Burridge was among those to struggle under the scrutiny. An Australian darling, she had been blessed with good looks as well as prodigious talent. She was just 16 when she turned professional and quickly scored modelling contracts – along with an endless commentary on her still-developing body.

“Was it any wonder I became anorexic? I don’t think so,” she observes. Drink and drugs helped stave off both the hunger and anxiety until she eventually sought professional help.

“They asked me: ‘How old do you have to be to be dead?’ It was one of the questions that brought me up short. I was living in an unmanageable way.”

Pam knew from the start competitive surfing wouldn’t be an easy ride. In one early event, the organisers couldn’t even be bothered running the women’s competition. “They just said to draw straws for first, second and third. It didn’t dawn on them that was wrong. It was the culture of the day: ‘Your performance doesn’t matter to us’.”

It was a phenomenon most women witnessed. In 1989, the organisers of one of the biggest pro events in the world, the Ocean Pacific in California, even dropped women’s surfing to provide more prize money for men – but kept the bikini contest. Only a huge letterwriting protest persuaded them to relent.

Yet still the frustrations continued. Women surfers received few media opportunities and magazines seemed more interested in whether menstruation made them shark bait than their skills. No one listened when they pointed out they could, if promoted, benefit the sport both by growing it and selling apparel.

“We were preaching to a bunch of Neanderthals with concrete in their ideas,” says Jodie.

Among those ideas was that the women should compete in impractical high-cut bathers that fell off or rode up. “One time I got pitched and got an enema so bad I thought I was going to die. It was like someone had put a bayonet up my bum,” says Jodie. “After that I always wore rolled up men’s board shorts.”

She wasn’t the only one and in the ’90s, the surf-wear companies finally figured out why they were selling so many pairs of tiny size 28 board shorts. Girls’ shorts weren’t available so they were wearing men’s.

Roxy was among the swimwear companies which immediately started rectifying that, and within four years more girls than ever were surfing and Roxy had gone from recession to a turnover of $600 million a year.

“It wasn’t rocket science,” sighs Jodie. “I could’ve told them that 10 years ago.”

While the women were the reason for the windfall, however, the money still wasn’t used to promote them. It went to the men.

Seven-times world champion and world masters champion Layne Beachley was sponsored by Billabong. “Fifty per cent of their turnover came from women but come contract negotiation time, I was told: ‘Joel Parkinson sells board shorts, Layne, you don’t sell bikinis so we’re only going to pay you a third of what we pay the men’s world champion’.” There was only one solution: get political. It meant risking being dropped by sponsors, fined by event organisers and trusting their fiercest rivals

not to break ranks – but when you surf waves of up to 15 metres, courage is one commodity not in short supply.

In 1999, after being ordered to surf in particularly atrocious conditions in South Africa, the women collected their jerseys, walked to the water’s edge, then, glaring, sat on the sand.

“The commentators kept saying: ‘Two minutes left. Paddle out’,” Pauline recalls. “And I said: ‘Stay here girls. Don’t move’. We all knew it wasn’t fair to keep sending us out in waves that weren’t rideable then accuse us of not surfing as well as the guys. But we were all really scared. We thought: ‘What’s going to happen to us for doing this?’

“In the end they had to stop it [the competition]. They couldn’t run the heat without us. We realised: ‘We can do something now,’ and we started refusing to go out when waves were bad.”

Layne was often sent forward to explain, becoming a champion for the women both in the boardroom and on the beach. “Women were never gifted the best conditions so I had to negotiate with the men and contest directors,” she says. “I had reputable surf forecasters on speed dial and would often accept mediocre conditions at the start of an event with the intention of scoring epic conditions for the finals at the end.”

It led to confrontations, including one where the men stormed the beach to prevent female semi-finalists entering the water at their scheduled time, insisting the fantastic conditions shouldn’t be wasted on girls. But Layne’s heat times were on paper.

The blokes had to back down.

Layne also took over from Pam Burridge as the lone female voice on the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Board. Sometimes she’d be arguing rules, locations and format changes for days. She remembers, competing for her sixth world title in 2003, itching to get into the perfect surf, but instead sacrificing her training for a seven-hour meeting. “I guess I must’ve believed my voice and opinion mattered. Someone had to do it.”

It was hard, though, she admits. “We felt so devalued and disrespected.” An example was when she was refused a year off from the tour to recover from chronic fatigue. “Yet they gave Kelly Slater a year off. Why? Because he was seen as having more value.”

Despite being one of the most successful surfers – male or female – in history, Layne won only $500,000 in 19 years of professional surfing. She’s since watched with glee Stephanie Gilmore and Tyler Wright pocket $100,000 for winning one event. “They can earn more in a year than I earned in 19.”

At her home north of Byron Bay, Jodie still surfs whenever she can. All her money goes on boards and she dreams of winning Lotto so she can afford to surf even more.

Why did the women put themselves through all that stress? Why not simply surf for surfing’s sake?

“We wanted it to keep going,” she replies. “Even with the rivalries, we had that common bond: We wanted women’s surfing to prosper and get better. Yes, we had shitty conditions and no money but we had so much fun. We really did enjoy our lives.

“Would we do it again? You’d better believe we would!” AWW

Girls Can’t Surf is in cinemas from March 11.