Women at the PWA: working from the basis

Windsurfing is still a men’s domain, although more women are starting to make a name for themselves within the sport. Compared to 20 years ago, women have already come a long way in windsurfing, more and more are standing their ground in international competitions. The experiences that pioneers like Karin Jaggi (now 37) and the Morenos (now 34) once made, were comparably harsher:  

 

Karin: “When I first started, all the positions for women were filled - which means there were always 32 women in starting positions.  Then everything became more complicated from the financial perspective and it was harder to go on tour- it was women that were first in line with this issue. They lost their sponsors and thus their enthusiasm to sustain in such a male domain. 

 

Now, the men are suffering with the financial dilemma just like the women and so everything in this sport is in a semi-balance again.  Those that go on tour these days definitely don’t do it for the sake of the money, but because windsurfing is their life and because the PWA world tour has been their dream since early childhood.  (…). I guess I just survived for so long on this tour because I really am a very competitive person. Also, because I have found so many good friends in the windsurfing sport.

 

I would recommend young women who want to become professional windsurfers to just go ahead and try! It’s true, it’s a fight for survival – but what isn’t nowadays? You have to become your own one-woman-business and for that, you need a strong will and staying power.”

 

Daida: “When we first started competing in PWA most of the main girls at that time gave up (Jutta Muller, Nathalie Levrie, Britt Dunkerbeck, Kelly Moore, Jane Seaman…). But we didn’t give up that easily. We started working into the base, trying to bring more girls into the tour while we trained with the boys and raised the performance level of the girls. At the beginning it was really hard, most of the boys were jealous, we were also sharing the price money… there were many things that needed to be changed in the rule books for us, so we could have more girls on tour.”

 

Iballa adds: “It was hard to see how you come very motivated into an sport and see how the big names were leaving it… I think nowadays the girls are still fighting for their rights at the same time that men are trying to have a better tour for all riders….It’s still not easy and there still needs to be done a lot to develop the sport not only in the water but also outside.”

 

Men vs. women – who’s the better windsurfer?

The windsurfing speed record, the highest windsurfing jump... done by men. The most ruthless wavesurfers... men. Are women simply not good enough?

 

“Women surf differently”, says …. She is the editor of Free, Europe’s larges water funsport magazine. “First of all, they don’t have the power men do. Rigging used to be a real problem, it was almost impossible until the new equipment of recent years”. This, of course, is something many women still remember from their earlier try-outs on a windsurf board – how hard it was to rig the equipment, to get board and sail to the water, to haul the sail out of the water. For this reason, there (still) aren’t that many women out there who even consider windsurfing as something they could do on competition-level.

 

“Try the new equipment”, xxx suggests. “The better the material, the faster we will learn”. She also requires a change of thought within the media “many magazines just publish pictures of female windsurfers if they fit the ‘beach babe’ criteria – not action shots. (…) But I personally would love to see more photos of someone like Steffi Wahl in action”.