WOMEN'S surfing has ridden a long wave in recent years but the fairer sex still wipes out when it comes to prizemoney.

While Taj Burrow took home $US75,000 for his win at the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper Rocks last week, home-town favourite Steph Gilmore pocketed a paltry $US15,000 for managing the same feat in the Roxy Pro.
 
"It is absolutely not fair but that is women's sport," said surfing academic Rebecca Olive, who is researching women's surfing in northern NSW with the University of Queensland's School of Human Movement Studies.

"What is usually said is women don't surf as well as the men and this is the really common refrain that you will always hear as to why women aren't promoted as much but it is just not true any more.

"There are some incredible female surfers and there have been for many years."

Ms Olive said it was not unusual for women to be sent out on the smaller waves in contests where both sexes competed.

"It is common for women to be put in the worst surf because the men get more attention and more promotion," she said. "But the effect of that is -- if you are always sending women out in the small waves -- they can't do as much with the waves ... and then they get less promotion, so there are all these impacts that happen."

Cabarita former pro surfer Kylie Webb -- who was in the top eight on the international tour from 1990 to 2001 and held the No.1 spot for 10 months -- said that, while times were changing, it had often been difficult to watch her male colleagues on the tour.

"We would go to a contest and the guys would pull up and get the fanciest hire cars and go to the hotels ... but the girls had more fun -- we had seven or eight of us in a car, all staying together," she said. "Our prizemoney was quite different. Equal prizemoney would be good."

Association of Surfing Professionals International -- which runs the world tour and administers prizemoney -- has just appointed top surfer Jessi Miley-Dyer to take on the new role of women's world tour manager.

"My first goal is to add more events and my second one is to increase the prize purse," she said. "Surfing is like all women's sports, but we have been lucky because we have had five prizemoney increases over the past five years, so we are slowly getting there."

She said it was difficult to compare prizemoney, with just 17 women on the world tour compared to double that for the men.

Surfing Australia chief executive officer Andrew Stark said the organisation took an extremely pro-active approach to women's surfing, including producing a new show featuring the top five Australian female surfers which will screen on Channel Nine in May.