Surfing
Surfing
Celebrating historic women's surfing events: Breaking waves and barriers
From 15th-century surfers to today’s Red Bull Magnitude, the only all-women big wave surf competition.
World Champion Caroline Marks is grateful to share the waves with so many other talented women. When Red Bull spoke to Marks in early 2024, she was in the middle of a big moment for smashing gender barriers in surfing.
Caroline Marks after winning the 2023 World Title
© Thiago Diz/World Surf League/Getty Images
“It's an amazing time for women's surfing,” she says. “The progression of the sport is getting higher and higher, and it's really cool to be a part of the movement.”
This movement has been a long time coming — women have been fighting for equal opportunities in surfing for as long as the sport has existed. Before surfers like Marks were able to get their rightful time in the spotlight, many others were fighting to break down doors. Read ahead for a guide to the historic women’s surfing events and athletes that led the way. You’ll start with 15th-century Indigenous surfers and go all the way up to today’s Red Bull Magnitude, the only all-women big wave surf competition.
Competitors at the Red Bull Magnitude 2024 opening ceremony in Waimea Bay
© Christa Funk / Red Bull Content Pool
Pioneers of the waves
Women may have started riding the waves as early as the 1600s. However, other sources say that much earlier, in the year 1445, Hawai’i’s Princess Kelea was named the region’s best surfer. In the late 1800s, Polynesian Princess Ka`iulani also famously paddled out in defiance of European missionaries who forbade surfing. As in other athletic disciplines, though, it’s taken many years for women’s impact on surfing culture to get proper recognition.
In modern surfing, Margo Oberg is often credited as one of the first full-time professional women surfers. The four-time world title holder, whose low-stance carving technique rewrote the rules on turns, won her first world championship in 1968 at age 15. Oberg would later go on to become a founder of the International Professional Surfers (IPS), a precursor to today’s World Surfing League (WSL).
WSL World Champion Carissa Moore in 2015
© Damien Poullenot/Rex/Shutterstock
Oberg wasn’t the first woman to earn the world champion crown, though — Australian surfer Phyllis O’Donnell won the World Championships in 1964. Prior to that, in 1959, California surfer Linda Benson was recorded as the first professional big wave surfer after tackling a 20-foot Oahu swell.
The California Golden Girls team especially put women’s surfing in the spotlight during the late 1970s. The charismatic group, which included surfers such as Candy Woodward and Betty Depolito, was a thrill to watch for years on the IPS World Tour. By the 1980s, the California Golden Girls had drawn in plenty of new fans and inspired many other women to pick up a surfboard.
Breaking barriers: the fight for equal pay
The women who paved the way for today’s surfing stars often faced discrimination and disrespect when trying to compete. In fact, the fight for equality in surfing has long hinged on gatekeepers refusing to pay women surfers their fair share. Women who won their divisions in the early contests of the 1960s were sometimes paid less than one-seventh of what their male counterparts earned.
The Women’s International Surfing Association was formed in 1975 as a response to this drastic pay discrepancy. The founding surfers, who included California Golden Girl Jericho Poppler, started hosting their own events where contestants of all genders could be compensated fairly.
The struggle for equal pay would nevertheless persist over the next few decades. In 1989, the Huntington Beach OP Pro tried to cancel the women’s competition altogether so that the men competing could earn more prize money. Surfing pioneer sisters Jolene and Jorja Smith fought back, and the organizers were forced to reinstate the women’s division event. It would still be another 30 years, though, until the WSL would grant women surfers equal pay.
The evolution of women's surfing competitions
Women surfers have been a part of mainstream surfing competitions for as long as they’ve existed. Surfers such as Oberg and the iconic Marge Calhoun cut their teeth in the Makaha International Surfing Championships — the unofficial world championships — in the 1950s. Events that solely featured women surfers date back even further.
One of the earliest women’s surf contests was the Pacific Coast Women’s Surfboard Championship. Surfing foremother Mary Ann Hawkins dominated the competition three years in a row starting in 1938, years before Oberg or Benson would make a splash.
The first women’s big wave competition, though, wouldn’t take place until 1986. If anything, ensuring women get the best waves when they’re competing has remained a longstanding struggle. In 1999, a South African competition was protested by women who were told they’d have to surf in flat waters.
Izzi Gomez
© Frank Quirarte
Fast forward to now, and Red Bull Magnitude is still the only all-women big wave surf competition. Izzi Gomez was among the 24 modern-day women surfers who competed in the 2024 event, which took place throughout January and February. The event’s judges included surf icons Rochelle Ballard, Andrea Moller, and Megan Abubo.
Red Bull Magnitude represents a vision of what women can pull off when they achieve full equality. In other cases when women have been allowed to compete in big-name events, sometimes, only a limited number of spots were available. In 2016, the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing organized for the Mavericks competition to feature a women’s heat with a minimum of 12 contestants.
Women’s surfing at the Pipeline
Carissa Moore surfs at Pipeline in Haleiwa, Hawaii
© Trevor Moran / Red Bull Content Pool
Up until recently, leading women surfers were still fighting to get more events at the Pipeline. This famous surf break on the North Shore in Hawaii is an essential pilgrimage for big wave surfers to prove their skills. That’s why it was such a big deal when the WSL finally relocated the Women’s Championship Tour final event to the Pipeline in 2020. Carissa Moore and Tyler Wright both delivered stellar performances, proving, as the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing says, that the waves don’t discriminate.
In 2022, women were finally added to the lineup at the Vans Pipe Masters, one of the best surf competitions in the world. Additionally, in a full-circle moment in early 2024, Caitlin Simmers won the WSL Championship Tour’s season opening at the Pipeline. The event was close, with Simmers neck and neck with Molly Picklum, the first woman to land a perfect 10 at the Pipeline. That perfect score wasn’t enough, in the end, to defeat Simmers in the Pipeline semi-finals. After winning, Simmers had one message for the world.
“Pipeline is for the f*****g girls!” she declared.
Caity Simmers, on top of the world and sitting pretty at Pipeline
© Tony Heff/World Surf League
Historic records and wins
For many years, the title of most World Surf Championship wins belonged to Australian surfer Layne Beachley. Her hunger for competition led to seven world titles, plus three Guinness World Records and spots in the Australian and American Surfing Halls of Fame. In 2022, though, fellow Australian Stephanie Gilmore claimed her eighth title, and a new woman was crowned as the surfer with the most world titles.
Stephanie Gilmore
© Ryan Miller / Red Bull Content Pool
Of course, winning multiple titles isn’t the only way to shatter records and break gender norms in surfing. Recently, there have been some incredibly inspirational stories of female surfers conquering massive waves. In January 2023, Laura Enever set a record for the largest wave ever paddled by a woman. The record-smashing wave at the North Shore’s Outer Reef was a whopping 43.6 feet high.
Laura Enever and her 44ft Outer Reef record breaker
© WSL/Daniel Russo
Additionally, although Picklum lost at the Pipeline, she still managed a defining moment — both in her career and the history of surfing — in early 2024. At the Hurley Pro event in Sunset Beach, Picklum performed a hail-mary turn and hammered upward into the lip of a giant wave. The daring move was voted the best turn of all time from a woman surfer by readers of Stab Magazine.
Women's impact on surfing culture: opening the door for the next generation
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As women surfers finally get the accolades they deserve, filmmakers are making sure the stories of the women who came before them are heard too. The 2020 documentary "Girls Can’t Surf," for example, tells the story of the long road to equality.
Today’s surfing legends are also committed to holding the door wide open for the young women following in their footsteps. Moore is a great example. One of her top career moments outside the competition circuit has been starting her non-profit Moore Aloha to help young women find their surfing community. Regardless of whether the next Moore emerges from the program, she’s providing important experiences that are sure to make a lifetime impact.
Carissa Moore
© Red Bull Content Pool
Women in surfing today have many surfing pioneers to thank, both for their surfing innovations and their unwavering organizing for equal opportunities. The work certainly isn’t done, but the road ahead looks much brighter for women surfers than it once did.
