You can’t be what you can’t see
It’s hard to calculate how many women there are worldwide that do watersports, but if we just take surfing alone, the International Surfing Association (ISA) estimated in 2014 that there were 35 million surfers, and that 19% were women. That’s over 6 million women, and it’s likely the figure has grown since a decade ago.
Imagine how many amateur, intermediate and professional women there are wakeboarding, kiting, windsurfing, sailing, kayaking, swimming, paddleboarding, rowing, scuba diving and more across the world. But why don’t we see more of us?
Let’s take the sport of surfing as an example, as there is more data available for this highly visible and popular sport.
Just one mention of a woman in a surf magazine – why? The business of sponsorships: bikini sales, unequal prize money and unregistered world records
In 2015, writer Joanna Schroeder picked up a few copies of the latest surfing magazines, and found just one mention of a women – yes, one! She called this the ‘eradication’ of female athletes in magazines – and when we do appear, unfortunately, it’s usually only a certain type of over-sexualised image.
But why is this? Sponsorships and media coverage often require female professional athletes to also take part in modelling jobs, meaning that the whole process becomes skewed away from sporting ability, and towards bikini sales.
Former top 10 surfer Rebecca Woods talked about this pressure to look ‘sexy’ to maintain sponsorship, at the expense of her surfing: “And you know, seeing certain girls that would rock up at events with their g-strings pulled very high up their bum and getting paid a lot of money basically just to do that, and then they lose in their first heat. I didn’t particularly feel like I wanted to get naked to become more famous. It’s pretty challenging surfing in a bikini in the water, too. You lose them and your bums out and it’s frustrating and you just want some boardies on sometimes. But if that’s your pay packet and if you want to go to certain events, you’ll put a bikini on because your dream is to win a world title.” Rebecca went on to lose sponsorship, signalling that sponsors were ignoring surf talent in favour of modelling. She self-funded herself on tour for three years, until she retired at just 29 years old in 2013.
Pro surfer Keala Kennelly, one of the minds behind the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing (CEWS), also says that being ‘sexy’ is somehow more important that sporting ability when it comes to sponsorship: “You’re expected to look like a model and then somehow surf like an athlete.” A perfect example of this can be seen in big brand Roxy’s 2013 hypersexualised ad for a female surfing competition, which it very publicly came under fire for, leading to a petition that quickly amassed 20K signatures.
How does this effect equal pay for female athletes? In 2018, after tireless campaigning on the part of organisations like CEWS, the World Surf League announced that it would award the same prizes to men and women in all of its events. While this was a huge win, it unfortunately hasn’t levelled the playing field across the board. Athlete Keala Kennelly explains that while prize money is important, actually the vast majority of surfers earnings come from corporate sponsorships, which brings us right back round to bikini sales. She estimates that male big-wave surfers earn 80-90% more from sponsorship than female athletes, which means that female pro surfers often don’t make enough to compete full time, and end up juggling multiple jobs to make ends meet, all whilst training for competitions. “When I won my big-wave world title, I went right back to Oahu for my bartending job”, said Kennelly.
Furthermore, just this year – yes, in 2021 – competition prize money still isn’t equal across the board, either. Lucy Small, the female champion of a premier Sydney longboard surf competition, recently called out the inequality of prize money as she accepted the prize: “Thank you to the sponsors for the money they’ve put into the event, but I would say it’s a bittersweet victory knowing that our surfing is worth half of the men’s prize money. It took the same amount to drive here, flights were the same cost to fly here, accommodation cost the same and our surfing is worth half [as] much. So maybe we can think about that for next time.” The event organiser’s response? It’s not illegal. Club secretary Phil Nicol defended the decision, stating: “Did we do anything illegal? No. This is a more, this is a moral issue … we’ve done nothing illegal”.
When it comes to big wave surfing, there has even been a battle to get women’s records acknowledged. In 2013, surfer Maya Gabeira took on a monster swell in Portugal, and surfed a 21 metre (69 foot) wave, breaking the world record that she had been training for. Confirmed on the day by an independent expert, the record was subsequently sent to the World Surf League (WSL) to recognise the achievement and enter her into the Guinness World Records. But months went by, and nothing happened. It finally took Gabriel months of work and an online petition with 20,000 signatures to get her record registered. She was the first woman to be awarded for big-wave surfing – a landmark moment for the sport, which unfortunately yet again spotlighted surfing’s gender bias. By the way, in 2020, Gabeira set a new world record for women and men by surfing a 73.5-foot wave (the men’s XXL Biggest Wave Award winner, Kai Lenny, rode a 70-foot wave).
When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Keala Kennelly, one of the first openly gay women in pro surfing, was dropped by most of her sponsors when she came out in 2008. Similarly, at one point pro surfer Nique Millar was ranked 3rd on the APP World Tour and still didn’t have any sponsors backing her: “it’s very hard in the surf community for athletes of colour to get fair treatment and funding…I was good enough and I was talented enough, but brands were only sponsoring the stereotypical-looking girl.”
Finally, this year Nique has finally landed a sponsorship deal (with Billabong no less), and big brands like Apple and Hurley have also made steps towards supporting diverse female surfers, so perhaps things are starting to change.
As they say, “you can’t be what you can’t see”, and BlueBound is on a mission to change that, for all the watersports. We believe in the empowering force of diversity and inclusion, and we won’t stop until every woman has an equal opportunity to equally enjoy their sport, or compete, in the water.
Are you with us? Join our community and be part of the movement!
