Big Waves and Board Riders

It’s a cold late autumn morning on a Sydney surf beach.

Sea spray, inky water, and a lazy orange sun seeping over the horizon, lighting up the surfers hanging out for just one more wave.

But the main event is in the shed. It’s functional. It smells of suncream, oil, and wax. Walls lined with surfboards, wetsuits and tide chats, there is just enough room for four men to crowd around a phone, live streaming the Tahiti Pro.

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It was gladiatorial. Their hollering echoes off the walls as they will the surfer on. Roaring ?at each other, making sure their mate hadn’t missed it. The blue of the screen lighting up their faces as they praised the competitor’s line, their strength, their guts. Their bravery.

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And she was. She was ferocious. ?Tatiana Watson-Webb had just scored the first perfect 10 in the women’s competition, in a ride described by the World Surfing League as “quite possibly one of the best barrels ever ridden in competition.” And done in a competition closed to women until 2021, because it was considered too dangerous. ?

And Tatiana wasn’t even the winner. That went to local wildcard, Tahitian Vahine Fierro. "Just being against the best in the world, and learning from their experiences, their competitive skills, it just pushes everybody," Fierro said, and she’s right.

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It’s like watching a swell build. Women’s surfing, like women’s representation in the boardroom has been built gradually, over time. The achievements of those who represent on podiums and around board tables, were built on the shoulders of those that took a lone paddle and dropped in long before them.

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It takes a lot to dive in the deep end, especially when there are a few “sharks” out there….Research shows women, both the pro surfers and NED’s, who launch first are intrinsically independent. They have to be, to tolerate the discomfort of always being excluded, always just outside the pack.

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The first wave all had a burning desire to achieve. They each held a competitive edge, welded into their identities. Each brought a strong sense of their right to be there, and a dogged grittiness to keep showing up, regardless of the bruising from the day before.

And slowly, irrespective of the conditions that they faced, women in Australia were able to achieve what no other nation globally has managed. Without a single legislated quota or target, and quite often in spite of co-ordinated petitioning against such initiatives by industry bodies and political parties, Australian female NEDS hold 34% of all board seats on ASX 100 boards.

Australia continues to lead in innovative initiatives. May 31st marked the deadline for the WGEA Gender Equity Reporting Program, a process designed to collate metrics around gender equity in private organisations more the 100 employees. Such initiatives and progress would not be conceivable without the effort and determination of the female leaders who rose in a multitude of professions through the 80s, 90s, and 00’s, and then continued to advocate for the next generation of women behind them, when they had already done so much.

The WGEA initiatives and the awareness of female management, pay and promotion statistics it brings will be much like tide charting. If you’re a career minded and ambitious woman who wants to compete, you’ll go where the waves are building. Like attracts like, and awareness leads to a continued pipeline of talented, skilled women for C-suite and in NED roles.

As Fierro said after her win, “That’s what women need, we just need conditions and we're going to show up, we're going to throw ourselves over the ledge and try and try and try, over again."