For the first time in World Surf League history, there will be a Women’s Championship Tour event at Oahu’s fabled North Shore break, Pipeline. The historic moment comes on the heels of tragedy, after a shark attack at Maui’s Honolua Bay suspended the first Women’s Tour event of the 2021 season.
According to Jessi Miley-Dyer, the WSL’s Vice President of Tours and Competition, the decision to move the Maui Pro to Pipeline was made after consulting with tour athletes, who were eager to compete on surfing’s largest stage.
“It can’t be stressed how huge this is for women’s surfing,” Miley-Dyer told For The Win via phone from Oahu. “We’ve been pushing the progression of the women’s sport in a bunch of ways, from pay equity to having the same number of events as the men, and the natural thought here was, could we finish this at Pipe?”
For the past 48 years, the Billabong Pipe Masters contest has been one of surfing’s most storied events, brining together the world’s best surfers at arguably the world’s most famous surf break. For almost five decades though, the contest has also only had a men’s division. Despite what the 2002 film Blue Crush depicted, Pipe Master’s has never had a women’s champion.
Top female surfers have taken part in exhibitions and lower-profile contests at Pipe before, but professionally, there’s never been a Women’s Championship Tour event. The World Surf League has run the Women’s Pipe Invitational four times in the past six years to showcase women’s talent, but in terms of prize money and points earned, the women have traditionally surfed Maui’s Honolua Bay while the men charged the winter swell on Oahu’s North Shore.
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There are cultural as well as bureaucratic reasons that contests along the North Shore have been segregated in the past.
“Pipe is a monster of a wave,” Miley-Dyer said. “If you haven’t had experience with it, it can really be a beast. I mean, it’s dangerous anyway, but you have to put a lot of time into that wave. It’s the most competitive wave in the world. Without the experience, it’s like going on a tennis court for the first time and trying to defeat Roger Federer.”
It isn’t that women aren’t capable of surfing the wave, or are too scared to, but that Pipe’s male dominated culture has often been a deterrent. The wave has always had an intense pecking order and thrives on intimidation, making it harder for women to even practice.
In a recent Instagram post, four-time World Champion and Oahu native Carissa Moore wrote about practicing at the break with “all-around Pipe specialist” Jamie O’Brien. Part of the reason O’Brien paddled out with Moore was to help block waves for her, and provide backup against some of the toxicity that can flare up in the battle for a good wave.
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“Being completely honest, this is a little out of my comfort zone but wow what an incredible opportunity to learn, push myself a little and surf one of the best waves in the world with only a few other women out,” she wrote.
The Maui Pro finishing at Pipe also comes on the heels of the passage of a historic women’s sports equality bill by the Honolulu City Council.
According to city council member Kymberly Pine, in the past decade, no permits have been issued by the city’s parks and recreation department for women’s surfing events on the North Shore during the winter swell season, despite requests from female surfers.
The WSL was granted a variance by city and state officials to finish the Maui Pro at Pipeline, and was not reliant on the passage of the bill. But Bill 10, otherwise known as the surf equity bill, now makes it harder for permits to be denied for women’s surf competitions.
“The Council finds that equal opportunity to participate in and be involved in sport and physical activity, whether for the purpose of leisure and recreation, health promotion or high performance, is the right of every person and that historically, women’s activities have often been subordinated to men’s activities,” the bill reads.
Since surfing has grown in popularity, Pine explained, the number of permit requests has grown exponentially but the number of permits has remained the same.
“In order to make room for the growing number of male competitors the women’s events got eliminated entirely,” Keala Kennelly, a 2018 Big Wave Champion and advocate for the bill, told Surfline. “The women have not been part of the Triple Crown of Surfing on the North Shore since 2010. That’s an entire decade of exclusion.”
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Council member Pine, who authored the bill with co-sponsor and Parks and Recreation Department chair Heidi Tsuneyoshi, said that they council wasn’t even aware of the double standard until it was brought to their attention.
“They can’t give any good answers on why they didn’t give a permit to women’s events,” Pine said. “I don’t think it was malicious, but sometimes in government, I’ve found that people just press the easy button because things are so overwhelming. A lot of times the answer is just, ‘oh it’s already booked.'”
The bill passed unanimously, “to assure the fair allocation of park facilities without discrimination on the basis of gender.”
“I don’t think anyone purposefully did this,” Pine said. “But this is why discrimination exists. It comes from tradition.”
The WSL has never applied for a permit at Pipe for women, but the league has tried to get permit extensions with the goal of adding women to other events and been denied.
Per a WSL spokesperson, the WSL applied in 2018 for a 5th day of competition to add women to the 2019, 2020 and 2021 Hawaiian Pro and Vans World Cup,
“This signaled that the WSL wanted to invest in women’s competition at the Vans Triple Crown in all of these years. All of these permit requests were denied by the City,” the WSL said in a statement.
A casual emphasis on surfing tradition has blocked women from having equal opportunity and equal access, especially at Hawaii’s North Shore. That, in addition to the breaking of cultural barriers, makes the Maui Pro at Pipe such a special, watershed moment.
It’s not full equality, but it’s another step in the right direction.
