Top 5 Moments in the Fight for Pay Equality in Surfing According to Sachi Cunningham

A decade in the making, Sachi Cunningham’s SheChange film is set to release this coming spring. Cunningham, a San Francisco native and former Journalism teacher at SF State, has impressed surfers the world over during Northern California winters when she swims with a hefty 25-pound camera and housing at Mavericks and Ocean Beach.

For the last 10 years, her lens has focused on the achievements and camaraderie of four women: Bianca Valenti, Keala Kennelly, Paige Alms and Andrea Moller, who together led the charge in advocating for female big wave surfers to have the same opportunity and pay as men. The SheChange narrative arc starts when Cunningham first met that crew at Mavericks at a first-of-its-kind contest with 13 women, shows how their effort led the World Surf League to announce equal prize money for both genders and ends with the 2023 Eddie, the first time women competed at the prestigious Waimea Bay event.

Related: Meet The Filmmaker Behind the Upcoming Documentary on Women’s Big-Wave Surfing

The budget for Cunningham’s film has been grassroots. She invested her own money and taken in independent donations. She and the executive producers need another $450,000 to close the fundraising gap. That money will be used for final editing, graphics and licensing footage and music. Filmmaking ain’t cheap. You can learn more about the film and donate through the link here .

If swimming through the Ocean Beach minefield or creating a film without a major backer didn’t demonstrate how committed Cunningham is, this example will. At one stage in the production, Cunningham fought through fallopian tube cancer and chemotherapy to complete the project . As she explains in the clip above, she was in the midst of serious treatment but in 2016 was unable to take a chemo infusion due to low white blood cell count yet still flew to shoot a pumping Jaws Challenge the following day.

The film tracks the efforts of the surfers to get a women’s heat and equal prize money at the Mavericks Invitational. They did this by using the California Coastal Commission's mandate to protect equal access to the coast. The California State Lands Commission also applied pressure by stating men and women had to be paid equally in the same event. The women’s influence led to far-reaching ramifications, and in 2018 the WSL announced that men and women in all its divisions, not just big waves, would receive equal prize money in competition. Ironically, the WSL has not run many, if any, big-wave paddle contests for men or women since then.

“The sad part of the story is there hasn’t been a one-day contest at Mavericks since this happened, but I think there have been great strides for women in big wave surfing and for women in surfing in large part because of what these women did,” Cunningham said. “I love the quote ‘journalism is the first draft of history’ and I love being on the front lines of history in the making.”

The growth of women’s big wave surfing is evident even without a single-day event, as long-form digital platforms like The Red Bull Magnitude, Big Wave Babes, Mavericks Awards and the SURFER Big Wave Challenge have all raised the bar for progression. But at the end of the session, as Cunningham said, there should be a goal bigger than money.

“Making a living off it is still a question mark, but I think most big wave surfers know in the end the ocean is in charge,” she said. “I think we’re all grateful to experience its magnificence when it turns on.”