A few weeks ago Bear Mountain hosted the Hot Dawgz & Hand Rail competition and thought it would be a good idea to set the cash awards for men three times as much for women. Here’s what we have to say about that. Thank you to Charlotte Harris and Leah Bothamley for contributing to this letter.
Dear Snowboarding,
We fell in love with you because you said f*ck it to everything status quo. You answered our call for something real, something that made us feel alive. You transformed our experiences on the mountain from buttoned-up and basic to punk rock. You changed everything.
Fast forward 50 years and you are now the status quo. You are an outdated industry that is unfortunately hanging on to the exclusive and sexist good ol’ days. The Bear Mountain Hot Dawgz and Handrails event, in which men received $15K in prize money and women only $5K, is the latest example of your inability to recognize the change happening around you.
To all of the sponsors: You are complicit in gender inequality by promoting the gender pay gap. You make active decisions about where to put your marketing dollars, and you chose to support an event that marginalizes women. You are making a mistake.
32, 686, Active, Arbor, AmericanExpress, Aloha (Growing Young Snowboards), Big Bear Boards, Burton, Cliff, Electric, Ford, GoPro, June Mountain, Lucas Oil, Mammoth, Mervin, GNU, LibTech, BentMetal, Neff, New Era, O’Neil, Pepsi, Send It Society, Signal Snowboards, Smith Optics, Snowboarder Mag, TransWorld, USASA, Volcom, Wahoo’s
Please do not respond with the usual, lazy excuses: Not enough women participate to deserve equal pay, women aren’t as good or at the same level to deserve equal pay, and/or women don’t create the same audience engagement to deserve equal pay. Women know our worth. When you pay us and recognize our skills, we will show up in force.
Today, we ask you to do better, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because the future of your industry depends on it.
XXOO, Jen Gurecki, CEO Coalition Snow