The fight to achieve equal pay for both men and women has won a battle in a rather unlikely place: The World Surf League’s Championship Tour. When Stephanie Gilmore won the 2018 Rip Curl Pro competition, she earned $65,000 for her victory, while her male counterpart, Italo Ferreira, got $100,000 for his. This time around, the winners of the competitions had the exact same amount of money written on their oversized checks, making the top-tier of pro surfing one of the only US-based sporting competitions requiring equal pay for men and women. The league’s decision deserves to be lauded, but it also took something of a perfect storm for them to finally act. The fight to rid pro surfing of pay inequality only started to gain ground over the past few years when a number of high profile women surfers, and organizations like the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, began to shed light on the sport’s sexist culture that infects everything from its competitive structure to profitable sponsorship deals.
Pro surfing just became one of the first US sports to pay men and women equally
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