The culture was terrible : new film charts how trailblazing women surfers forced change
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Widely recognised champions in Stephanie Gilmore, Tyler Wright and Sally Fitzgibbons. A recent breakthrough to get equal prizemoney with male surfers. And just before Christmas, an historic first event at Hawaii s iconic Banzai Pipeline.
Former world champion Pam Burridge is delighted by how far women s surfing has come since her early years on the professional tour in the 1980s.
In 2019, the World Surf League made the decision to award equal prize money to men and women for competition surfing, making the league the “First American-based global sports league to offer gender pay equality,” according to a tweet the WSL made at the time. And just a few weeks ago, Tyler Wright made history as the first woman to win a CT event at Pipe. That being said, it’s been a long road to get to where we are today, and there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
The new surf documentary
, Girls Can’t Surf, tells the tale of the long-fought battle for gender equality in surfing from the 1980s up until today, augmented with the perspective and stories of former female pros such as Jodie Cooper, Pam Burridge, and the Smith twins Jorja and Jolene, who competed at a time when things were far from equal and the attitude towards women’s surfing was, frankly, disgusting. “I think they just need to look like women,” former world champ Damien Hardman says in t