Women want equality on waves
By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer
Among the throng of spectators who watched world champion surfer Andy Irons clinch both the Xbox Gerry Lopez Pipeline Masters and the Van's Triple Crown of Surfing were top professional surfers Layne Beachley of Australia and Rochelle Ballard of Hawai'i.
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Beachley and Ballard, who were both stunt doubles in the Universal film, "Blue Crush," had earlier thrilled the Banzai Pipeline crowd with a wave riding "expression session," which is to surfing events what half-time is to a football game.
Layne Beachley, at the shoreline near Sunset Beach, laments the lot of sister surfers in the world of professional surfing.
But while the two women looked on as Irons' bank account expanded by $40,000 on Tuesday, they lamented the lot of their sister surfers.
In a season of seemingly endless conflicts among North Shore surfers, there is now grumbling among a group of athletes who have previously been relatively quiet:
Women.
Among the complaints:
- Women are relegated to lesser wave venues, such as Turtle Bay, or, in the case of the Women's World Championship of Bodyboarding, moved to the smaller waves at the end of the season in March.
- Women's events lose sponsorship to male events, which are considered more important by the men in charge.
- The men who control the competitive surfing industry market to men, not women, despite the fact that in the film, fashion and magazine worlds, the focus is on women surfers.
"We get second-class treatment out here, if not worse," said Ballard, who added that women and men surfed in harmony for ages before male-dominated pro surfing kicked into high gear and "women were pretty much just shoved off to the side."
Beachley, who made history a week ago by winning her fifth consecutive world surfing championship, said until two years ago women surfers shared the Roxy Pro event with the Rip Curl Cup competition at Sunset Beach. But after the men's event was elevated to the World Championship Tour, Rip Curl's title sponsors decided they no longer wanted the women around.
"They want the guys to have the best waves possible," Beachley said. "If it's between the guys getting the best waves and the girls getting the best waves, there's no contest."
This year, one of the major women's professional surfing events was held at Turtle Bay, which does not feature world class competition waves. Beachley said men would scoff at the prospect of holding a World Championship Tour event at Turtle Bay.
"We deserve equality, and we are going to continue pushing for it," she said. "We feel we can surf these waves as well as the guys, and we want the opportunity to show the world what we can do."
Which is what Randy Rarick, executive director of Van's Triple Crown of Surfing, said he tried to do last Tuesday.
"The expression session was my attempt to give the women more exposure," said Rarick. "The movie 'Blue Crush' was all about this fictitious women's Pipeline Masters. Well, there's no such thing. My goal was to show that women really are worthy of being recognized."
As for the Turtle Bay venue, Rarick said after the Roxy Pro lost its Sunset Beach sponsorship, he was left without three events for the women's Triple Crown. That's why the event wasn't held last year.
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Rarick said he was disappointed that Rip Curl sponsors opted to oust the women, but he was powerless to do anything about it. So this year, with no options left for securing a competition permit from the city, Rarick made a deal with the privately owned Turtle Bay to hold a Triple Crown event there.
"We deserve equality, and we are going to continue pushing for it," said top professional surfer Layne Beachley. "We feel we can surf these waves as well as the guys, and we want the opportunity to show the world what we can do."
"It was either that or do away with the women's Triple Crown altogether," he said.
Nevertheless, Rarick contends that everything Beachley and Ballard say is accurate. He says it's an injustice that the industry gives men a better shake. He says he has tried to do what he can to even the waters, such as making sure the extra prize bonus is the same $7,500 for both men and women Triple Crown winners.
He also concedes that women surfers are riding a huge wave of popularity, because of the focus on female surfers by "Blue Crush" last summer as well as television, magazines and the fashion industry.
"There is more and more emphasis on women in surfing," Rarick said. "But, the true product sales of surf wear apparel companies are male dominated, and that's reflected in the amount of sponsorship support that goes back into the sport. If you are selling $1 million worth of product and 33 percent is women's and 66 percent is men's, you're going to put more money into the men's promotion."
Competitive male surfers outnumber their female counterparts by more than 10 to one, according to Rarick. A dozen men's WCT competitions offer $250,000 purses each, whereas the prize money for the half dozen annual women's WCT events is only $60,000 each.
In other words, it gets down to money, just as it does with golf and basketball and other sports where women have struggled for equal financial support and equal media attention for years.
"There is definitely a disparity between the men and the women," Rarick said. "But women will never be on an equal par with men because, at least in this day and age, the marketing potential is not equal."
After the City and County of Honolulu recently began limiting North Shore wave competitions because of too many colliding events and complaints from recreational surfers, Carol Philips, director of the two-day Women's World Championship of Bodyboarding at Pipeline, was stunned to learn her competition had been dropped from the permit list.
When Philips argued that her contest had run in February at Pipeline for 13 consecutive years and was the biggest international women's water sports event on the North Shore, she was granted a permit to hold the event in March. That time slot is at the end of the surf season when Pipeline's world famous waves are smaller.
Philips believes her event got elbowed out primarily because it is a women's contest that offers a relatively small $20,000 in prize money. She believes the bigger purses began the friction between men and women wave athletes.
"When we started the event in 1990, the men were supportive and the pressure wasn't there," Philips said. "But then, when the money thing started going up in the surfing world in the mid-1990s, it was suddenly like guys were saying, 'You're interfering with our right to make a living.' "
But outspoken professional surfer Liam McNamara maintains that the conflict between men and women is simply a matter of supply and demand. The rules stipulate that there can be no more than 16 days of competition a year at any of the North Shore's major beaches. That means limited competitive wave access, he said.
"Women surfers deserve to have an event at Sunset," McNamara said. "They just don't deserve to have as many days and as many people in the event as the men. There are about 16 women who are on that level, as opposed to about 128 guys."
McNamara said Philips' bodyboarding event should be limited to one day at Pipeline because otherwise it uses too much of "a major commodity in Hawai'i."
"If she had the best of the best and limited it to one day, she'd have a really quality event. As it is now, she has an open entry to any Suzie, Nancy or Jenny from anywhere who wants to compete."
Countered Philips: "The argument is that there's just no money in women's sports. But in the Olympics, arguably the biggest sporting event in the world, it appears that the women's ice skating and gymnastics are the most popular divisions.
"The first time a movie about surfing became a blockbuster hit, it was about women. So, the question that begs to be answered is, why is there no money in women's sports? My answer is that I don't think there are enough women in decision-making positions."
And at least one woman believes that, thanks to "Blue Crush," things are changing for the better for women wave riders, just not as fast as some would like.
"It's slowly progressing," said Caron Farnham, an amateur surfer and production worker for numerous competitive North Shore wave events. "It isn't going backward.
"The money is definitely on the men's side for now. But women are the major shoppers and the buyers. And those girls who are getting in now are going to make money down the track, especially those who are running the companies — the swimwear, film and magazines companies."
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
