As the curtain lifted on the North Shore’s winter wave season, female surfers stole the show with no-holds charging, wipeouts and glorious tube rides in big, gnarly conditions at Banzai Pipeline, where they competed in storied contests that included them for the first time.

Meanwhile, the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation announced it is revising its Shore Water Event Rules governing surf contests, canoe regattas, triathlons and swim races, inviting the public to participate by filling out a new survey on its website or paper copies provided at city halls in Honolulu and Kapolei.

DPR also posted draft rule amendments regarding gender equity, an issue that’s addressed in the survey along with the timing and number of surf events and community impacts such as traffic, crowds and reduced recreational access when surf sites are reserved for competitors.

In 2020, female surfers, advocating for equal opportunity after having been historically underrepresented and underpaid in surf competitions, helped secure the City Council’s passage of Resolution 20-12, known as the “surf equity resolution,” and Bill 10, mandating gender equity for all sports activities requiring a city park use permit.

“When I found out women had been excluded for more than 10 years from pro events on the North Shore, it was time to recognize discrimination was happening, get nondiscrimination laws (passed) and then followed,” said pro surfer Keala Kennelly, a member of the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, which successfully pushed the World Surf League to provide parity for women in prize purses in 2019.

She, Rochelle Ballard and many other Hawaii women used to compete in the Triple Crown of Surfing at Oahu’s Haleiwa Beach Park and Sunset Beach and Maui’s Honolua Bay, but the women’s division was dropped after 2010, Kennelly said.

Although North Shore surf event permits for 2022-2024 were issued before the law took effect, WSL added a women’s division to its Billabong Pro Pipeline and Hurley Pro Sunset Beach championship tour events starting this season, and in January sponsored the first female team in the Da Hui Backdoor Shootout.

“We dubbed them the mana wahine, powerful women, and they were the highlight of the whole Backdoor Shootout,” event organizer Mahina Chillingworth said of the women’s team, which included Kennelly, fellow Kauai natives Bethany Hamilton and Malia Manuel, Honolulu’s five-time world champ Carissa Moore and North Shore natives Betty Lou Sakura Johnson, Luana Silva and Moana Jones Wong, who went on to win this month’s Pipe Pro.

“People were surprised the women did so well at Pipe in the Billabong, but I’ve always known they were capable. They just haven’t been given the opportunity,” said Kennelly, who was the first woman invited to participate in the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational and won 2021’s inaugural Red Bull Magnitude big-wave surf competition for women in Hawaii, organized by surf equity activist “Banzai” Betty Depolito.

“We were watching women’s surfing progress in real time,” Kennelly said.

“But it’s still too slow,” Depolito said, noting the new rules wouldn’t go into effect until 2025, while the next round of triennial event applications is due in September 2024.

The Billabong Pro Pipeline fielded 42 men and only 18 women, and “we’re trying to get it equal-equal,” she said, noting that while prize money was equal between individuals, the men as a group received more than the women.

Equal numbers are needed in all pro and amateur contests alike to give up-and-coming local girls equal opportunities with local boys, Depolito said.

She added she has twice canceled her Women of the Bay big-wave contest at Waimea Bay due to COVID- 19 but has otherwise never had the chance to run it because required conditions, including wave faces of 40 feet or higher, have never been met during the holding period.

The Eddie Aikau Invitational, Depolito added, always receives the prime big-wave window of Dec. 1 to Feb. 28.

The DPR survey, which explores changes in how holding periods are awarded, has received 227 responses to date, but the city is hoping for many more, said spokesman Nathan Serota. He noted that a recent survey about park playing courts received upward of 1,800 submissions.

“I hope people weigh in. We’re really trying to make sure there’s equality when awarding permits, and we need the community’s feedback,” said Kanani Oury, who serves on DPR’s Shore Water Advisory Group along with Meghan Statts, assistant administrator for the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation at the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, and surf shop owner Keone Downing.

The draft proposals and survey questions explore changing the minimum wave face height to 35 feet or higher for big-wave events; allowing a big-wave event at Waimea to run contemporaneously with a contest at another North Shore break; providing additional competition days; adding events without adding competition days; and adjusting the number of “cooling off” days between contests to let the North Shore community recover, said Oury, who is operating partner at Haleiwa’s Stonefish Grill and a former North Shore Neighborhood Board member.

The current rules limit the total number of competition days for surf events to 64 and stipulate that no more than 16 competition days may be scheduled at each beach park.

On DPR’s current North Shore calendar, an event holding period is in place every day except holidays from Jan. 1 through March 3.

For more information and to take the survey, visit honolulu.gov/parks.