When Cathy Young was a teenager in the 1970s, she wanted to surf.

But girls were not welcomed on the waves back then.

“I had a teacher who said to me, ‘You can’t do that — that’s what boys do,'” the 53-year-old Huntington Beach resident recalled. “And I was like, ‘No, really I can!’ I didn’t realize at the time that she meant I couldn’t do it culturally.”

Now the 36-year surf veteran catches waves four times a week in the summer.

One thing she can’t help but notice is that there are a lot more women in the water today.

Although surfing has long been considered a male-dominated sport, women are now seeing more equality on the waves, including greater rates of women’s participation and the World Surf League committing to parity in prize money between the sexes.