CONTEXT & CHALLENGE
Surfing is one of the few sports in which men and women compete on the same tour, on the same waves, for the same prize. Since 2019, the WSL has paid equal prize money at every event it runs. But equality on paper came after decades of a different reality in the water. For International Women's Day 2025, WSL Brazil wanted to celebrate women surfers without falling into the token tribute of flowers and canned phrases: looking at the achievements, at today's struggles and at a future of equity.
INSIGHT
When women arrived in surfing, the ocean already had an owner. Plenty of waves and not a single woman. Every spot in the line-up was won by force. And that movement can't stop. All it takes is hearing the call.
CONCEPT
SurFEM. Surf + Feminine.
A single word, designed to be a hashtag, a sign-off and a battle cry all at once. The idea was born to grow: #SurFEM, made to be wherever there's a woman surfer, a beach or a conversation about women in sport. More than a campaign, a movement.
THE FILM
The film opens in sepia, like archive footage, and is narrated by the women who fought for every meter of ocean:
When we got here it was all sand. Plenty of waves and not a single woman. The only way was to win our space by force!
Color comes back with them. The script plays with the gaze that always reduced women on the beach to their looks, "Want beauty? Look at that drop, what a beauty", and answers with maneuvers: the barrel, the layback, the carve. No sweet-singing mermaids here.
The only mermaids here stand on a board. And sing a battle cry! And if one falls, many rise.
And it closes with the campaign name becoming the sign-off: SurFEM. Nothing will stop us.
ONDAÇO
The call left the screen and went into the ocean. Throughout the first week of March, Tati Weston-Webb, Brazil's first Olympic medalist in women's surfing, called on her followers to paddle out all over Brazil on the 8th and post it on social media. A collective wave, from north to south, to show women's presence in the ocean, their voice and their strength in the sport.
On WSL Brazil's channels, the call became a countdown. Surfers, we want to see you. Women, see you in the water. The ocean is your stage! We want to watch! On the eve, tomorrow the waves are theirs. And on the 8th, the line that summed it all up: today the ocean is all ours. Every surfer was invited to post her surfing with #SurFEM and tag WSL Brazil, turning the league's profile into a showcase of women in the water.
