When I first started surfing as a teenager in Honolulu back in 1966, my uncle would make a path for me through the large, intimidating crowd of men on their long, heavy surfboards. These men greatly outnumbered the women who dared to surf the legendary waves at Queen’s surf break in Waikiki. It didn’t occur to me back then that it was ironic for men to dominate a surf break named after a powerful woman – Queen Lydia Lili’uokalani, whose cottage once stood on that very beach. In my eyes, surfing had always been a sport for men, one that girls like me were just beginning to break into. Little did I know that women had been surfing since the beginning, but were eventually pushed out of the sport as it gained popularity.
In the 19th century, Princess Victoria Ka’iulani, Queen Lili’uokalani’s niece, was famous for her love of surfing. Even before that, Kelea, a chief of Maui before Europeans arrived, was renowned for her passionate surfing and was said to love it more than any man. Queen Namahana’i Kaleleokalani was observed by the British explorer Peter Puget in 1794 as one of the most skilled surfers, riding on top of immensely high waves and skillfully turning just before they crashed into the rocks. Queen Namahana’s daughter, Ka’ahumanu, was also a surfer and would paddle out with her husband, King Kamehameha I, to the wild cliff breaks of the Kohala coast on the Big Island. According to historian John Papa Ī‘ī, the surfing spots were filled with both men and women during that time. Despite the traditional kapu system that could result in death for Hawaiian women who ate at the same table as men, they were considered equals when riding the waves.
There were times when women surfers outperformed the men. In an 1887 contest in Lahaina, Poepoe, the favorite, was challenged by his wife, Nakookoo, who swiftly zoomed through the foamy waves and bumped the champion off his usual victory plank, coming in first to the delighted cheers of the crowd, glad that a woman had emerged victorious. However, as the years passed and I began paddling out to the Diamond Head break in my neighborhood, I frequently found myself as the only girl, constantly blocked and pushed off waves by the boys who were violating all the etiquette rules Uncle Shippy had taught me. What annoyed me even more were the men in their 20s and older who would make unwanted advances. They usually backed off when I glared at them and paddled away, but I vividly remember one sunburned tourist who kept pursuing me until I screamed at him to get lost. “Wow,” he responded sarcastically. “How did you learn to speak such perfect English?” In his eyes, I was one of those dark-skinned, brown-haired Native girls who had been the subject of fantasy to outsiders since the arrival of Europeans in Hawaii. Tourists still expected to see us speaking broken English, wearing grass skirts, and living in grass huts, but not carrying surfboards. Go figure.
The backlash against women surfers gained momentum in the 1960s when popular books and Hollywood films romanticized the life of a California surfer girl called Gidget. This further commercialized and popularized surfing as a trend, fueled by the music of the Beach Boys. Men began to overpower women, seizing control of surf contests, magazines, and sponsorship opportunities. They also appropriated and revised surfing history, portraying women as weaker and less interesting to watch. An influential documentary called The Endless Summer, released in 1966, idolized Californian men on their global surf adventures while relegating women to secondary roles, showing them in bikinis on the beach. California had taken over Hawaii’s indigenous sport and excluded women, only to sell it back to us.
Men’s and women’s surfing contests were held at different locations. Prestigious and media-friendly venues like Banzai Pipeline and Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore were deemed too difficult and dangerous for women. This created a self-fulfilling prophecy, as women lacked sponsors and earned only a fraction of the prize money awarded to men, if any at all. As a result, they couldn’t afford to travel and invest time in gaining experience at these crowded and challenging breaks. “They claim that there aren’t enough women, but the reason is that women don’t get the opportunities,” said women’s-surf-event organizer Betty Depolito.
More than 50 years since the sexism I endured in the water began, widespread dismissal, intimidation, bullying, and sexual harassment persist in the surfing world. According to the International Surfing Association, male surfers still outnumber female surfers four to one globally. In a viral video from April, a man dropped in on pro surfer Sara Taylor in Bali. To avoid collision, she skillfully pushed him aside and continued her ride, only to be punched hard in the back of the head by one of the man’s friends, driving her underwater.
Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism. In 2017, the World Surf League organized its first-ever big-wave contest for women alongside the men’s event at Maui’s Peahi, also known as Jaws. Women’s-surfing advocates pushed for gender equity as a requirement for surf events at North Shore beach parks in Honolulu in 2019. That same year, the World Surf League began awarding equal prize money to male and female athletes. However, as Depolito points out, there are only half as many spots available for women as there are for men in the championship tour, meaning that men still receive a larger share of the overall prize money.
Last year, there were important breakthroughs in women’s surfing as the World Surf League organized women’s championships at venues that had been closed to them for many years. For the first time ever, a women’s championship tour contest was held at Pipeline, and competitions were also held at Sunset Beach for the first time in two decades and at Teahupo’o in Tahiti for the first time in 16 years. However, women were still sent out in inferior conditions, with the best waves reserved for men. Then, in January of this year, the greatest milestone of them all was achieved when six women surfed alongside 34 men in the Eddie Aikau Big-Wave Invitational at Waimea Bay, known as the Super Bowl of Surfing. Unfortunately, Depolito’s Women of the Bay contest at Waimea has yet to take place because the Eddie permit claims the three-month window when massive waves hit Oahu’s North Shore.
“Having all-women surf contests will encourage more women to surf, and that’s a good thing,” said Laura Thielen, the city’s parks director, during a public meeting. In response to objections from some men regarding women-only competitions, Thielen quoted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who, when asked when there would be enough women on the Supreme Court, replied, “When there are nine.”
This month, when the world-championship tour comes to a close with a surf-off in San Clemente, California, I will be cheering for Honolulu’s own Carissa Kainani Moore, the hometown hero. Moore won the women’s gold medal in the inaugural Olympic surfing event in 2021. Alongside her generation, she has led a resurgence in women’s surfing, following in the footsteps of the pioneers who have been fighting for equality for over 60 years. However, there is still a long way to go. As many surfers have told me, the lineup in offshore surf spots reflects a society in which women still have to fight to be taken seriously far too often. “Go on any wave,” a fellow surfer once said to me, but when I tried to catch a decent wave, he couldn’t resist and cut me off.
Surfing Sisterhood Hawaii – Wahine Reclaiming The Waves
By Mindy Pennybacker
This essay was adapted from Pennybacker’s book Surfing Sisterhood Hawai‘i: Wahine Reclaiming the Waves.
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