Lauren Hill Wants 6 Minutes of Your Time

“As I get older, I'm more interested in creating solutions than just talking about ongoing inequities,” Lauren Hill told SURFER. “I created the Women's Surf Community Questionnaire to try and get a sense of how our women's surf community wants to move the industry forward - if at all.”

The Florida-born, Byron Bay-based Hill has operated in the surf industry for almost two decades as a brand ambassador, writer, author, podcaster and filmmaker. In that time she believes that the industry has changed significantly. She feels that the surf industry might be starting to emerge from what she calls, “the hyper-masculine, dudefesty cultural hangover.” If it is, it's been a good 50-year bender. And that’s coming from an old surf hack who played his part in keeping the status quo.

Hill is in a good position to judge. A lot of her work has dealt with gender (in)equality, and the industry's exclusivity (or lack thereof). She’s come at those issues from a variety of angles. Her short film "Pear Shaped " took the piss out of all the little absurdities of the everyday realities of being a woman in the water entails. Humour was the sword to skewer the everyday challenges women face when simply going for a surf. And, to my knowledge, it was the first surf flick to use the term “minge cringe” and show a surfer wearing a sanitary pad.

In the episode of Stab’s "How Surfers Get Paid" series titled "The Sexualisation of Women’s Surfing," it was Hill's composed, articulate and unflinching voice that most effectively pointed out the inequality and misogyny that has been rife in the surf industry since, well, forever.

Elsewhere, The Waterpeople podcast , which she co-hosts with her partner Dave Rastovich , uses conversations with diverse voices within surfing culture from around the world to tackle issues on ecology, adventure, community, activism, and science.

And yet while Hill has views of her own on where the surf industry has been, and where it's headed, she really wants to hear what women surfers all over the world are thinking and feeling.

“Perhaps many women feel it's a lost cause and would rather spend their time and money elsewhere,” she said. “But I think there's a huge opportunity to help shape what the future of the industry looks like.”

The first step in that process is the six-minute Women’s Surf Community Questionnaire, which more than 500 surfers have taken already. But Hill wants to hear from more, and time is running out before it closes on September 14. Then she will start analyzing the data to see where action is needed the most. Hill is adamant that the more women that sign up will help in understanding how the surf industry can do a better job at connecting with women.

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