It’s been a wild few weeks in women’s surfing.
In early January, Hawaii longboard champ Kelia Moniz ended a 17-year ride as a Roxy Girl after her “best” ever contract was terminated, and she was asked to re-sign—with a 90% pay cut.
Last week, Hawaii’s five-time world champ Carissa Moore announced her retirement from competitive surfing. And then, Lisa Andersen, women’s surfing icon, legendary Roxy Girl, four-time world champ–and all-around badass who paved the way for women’s surfing—was let go by Roxy after 30 years.
But before all of this transpired, seven-time world champ Layne Beachley–a real-life surfing legend–addressed equality in pro surfing in an Instagram post.
Beachley shared the clip above a few months ago and captioned it:
“The Women’s surfing world has come a long way since I joined the pro tour in 1990 and I couldn’t be more proud of the progress.”
Opening the video, Beachley takes us for a tour of her trophies and says:
“What I loved about the women’s tour is that we always got trophies with men on them. Isn’t that fantastic? It was so progressive.
“When I joined the pro tour in 1990, it was very misogynistic, sexist, chauvinistic environment and we had to fight a lot of battles just to earn the right to surf in decent conditions and generate enough prize money to be able to afford to get to the next event.”
While searching for a trophy with a female surfer, she recalls being forced to wear men’s jerseys in a really “unwelcoming environment.”
“It inspired me to fight to change the landscape in women’s surfing,” she says.
That meant fighting for equal opportunity, equal prize money, and “permission to be part of the surf culture that we so desperately wanted to belong to.”
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