Women surfers are taking to the waves in unprecedented numbers in the US, challenging the predominantly male and sometimes macho culture of surfing.

A film called Blue Crush opened at the weekend, boasting the biggest budget of its kind, and women surfers hope it will have the sort of effect that the 1966 classic documentary The Endless Summer did for the world of surfing in general.

Blue Crush tells the story of three young women surfers in Hawaii. The trio work as maids at an upmarket hotel to finance their competitive surfing activities on the legendary North Shore.

The surfing scenes use three real champions, Rochelle Ballard, Kate Skarratt and Megan Abubo, as stunt doubles.

Some male surfers, though, have been quick to point out that another of the doubles in a sequence is actually a male surfer, Noah Johnson.

Beth Medina of SG, the first women's surfing magazine, said: "There are a lot more women out there than there used to be, but we are still kind of like an outcast, and I guess we always will be."

"Sometimes the men surfers can be aggressive and look at you like, 'Oh, she's just a girl' and not give you the wave, but that is changing.

"Men are starting to give us respect, but it can still be frustrating."

While the story has been criticised as pedestrian and predictable, there has been high praise for the surfing sequences.

A spokesman for the market research company Board Trac said yesterday that women were now estimated to make up between 16% and 22% of the 2.4m surfers nationally.

Surfwear companies which cater for women, most notably Billabong, have also reported recent increases in sales of as much as 50%.

SG's editor, Kai Stearns, says in the latest issue that the film "will prove, beyond a doubt, that women's surfing is on the rise and that the girls have staked their claim on surfing's masculine shores".

Only time will tell whether the effect will be permanent.

In 1959 Sandra Dee starred as a surfing girl in the film Gidget without making great waves for women surfers.

But then, she was always more interested in just getting the guy.