Inspired by big-wave women surfers securing the same prize money as men, California lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require equal purses for all athletes competing on state property used for recreation.
The bill, co-authored by San Diego assemblywomen Tasha Boerner Horvath and Lorena Gonzalez, is a continuing effort to challenge the once-accepted practice in sports of paying women less than men. But in an interesting political twist, lawmakers are borrowing the surfers’ strategy for an issue that also has confronted Hollywood, Silicon Valley and other workplaces in the #MeToo era.
“We would never say in any space public or private, it’s OK to pay women less than men,” Boerner Horvath said Thursday in a phone interview. “When we look at these athletes, this is their place of work. This is where they earn their money and where they perform.”
The bill would codify a State Lands Commission ruling last year that included pay equity as a condition for granting a permit to the Mavericks big-wave contest near Half Moon Bay that will be held before March 31 if wave and weather conditions allow it.
But the legislation also creates momentum for the women surfers to take their campaign into other arenas.
“When we get it in writing it gives us a lot more strength,” said San Francisco’s Bianca Valenti, one of the world’s best surfers who has led the equal-pay campaign. “Once California does something the rest of the world follows.”
Surfing, beach volleyball, marathons and triathlons — professional sports that need state permits to hold their events in some California locations — already offer equal prize money for women and men. The annual Amgen Tour of California, a 750-mile men’s cycling road race that stops in Morgan Hill on May 14, began giving women equal prize money last year for their abbreviated three-stage race.
Although its immediate impact might be more symbolic than tangible, supporters hope the state bill will lead to gender-equity legislation across the country. Valenti, one of the 10 women invited to compete for the first time at the famed Mavericks contest, always viewed the equality fight as going beyond surfing.
“When women get paid equally in every sport we are going to see the performance skyrocket,” she said Thursday.
The campaign began three years ago when Valenti helped create the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing with Sabrina Brennan, the San Mateo County Harbor Commission president. The Bay Area women, along with Hawaiian big-wave stars Paige Alms and Keala Kennelly, lobbied state and local agencies to not issue permits to contest organizers without gender equity.
It was considered a watershed moment when the World Surf League announced in September that it would pay women and men equally across all of its worldwide events starting this season.
“It’s not over: There’s Hawaii and there are the Olympics,” Brennan said Thursday. “We want to see all public lands and facilities require equity.”
Brennan already has talked to Honolulu politicians about getting their state to adopt similar oversights as California. She said Hawaii needs to change its shoreline rules that govern surf contests to include pay equity as a condition of use permits. Such a change would affect only those contests not run by the World Surf League, the sport’s biggest event organizer.
Pay disparity issues have been an ongoing concern for women entering the professional sports job market even as participation has grown dramatically in the aftermath of the passage of Title IX, a 1972 federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in schools and universities that accept public money.
Sports such as basketball, cycling, golf, hockey and soccer still have big wage gaps between men and women. Players on the highly successful U.S. soccer and ice hockey teams have sued and threatened boycotts over pay inequity.
The disparity exists because men’s sports started first, said David Berri, a Southern Utah University economics professor who writes about gender and sports.
“It’s not because men’s sports are more popular organically,” he added.
Not all sports struggle with the issue. Women get paid equally in tennis’ four Grand Slam tournaments, and in sports that include beach volleyball, mountain biking, road running, skiing, snowboarding, track and field and triathlons.
The Assembly bill being introduced also underscores the impact women can have when participating in politics.
“If you don’t have women representatives, then women aren’t represented,” Brennan said. “It’s pretty simple.”
