Jen Pawol to become 1st woman to umpire an MLB regular-season game during Braves-Marlins series

Jen Pawol will become the first woman to umpire an MLB regular-season game when she works this weekend's series between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves, the league announced on Wednesday.

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The 48-year-old Pawol will work the bases during Saturday's doubleheader and then go behind the plate for Sunday's series finale. She previously worked games during spring training in each of the past two seasons becoming the first woman to do so since Ria Cortesio in 2007

Pawol graduated from Minor League Baseball's umpire camp in 2016 and became the seventh woman to call a minor-league game, per the Society of American Baseball Research. Her cap and mask from that game are in the Hall of Fame. She has risen through the ranks since then, working in Triple-A in 2023 and all the way to the Triple-A championship game.

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Per SABR, she doesn't think her gender has much bearing on her job:

“I don’t really view umpiring as a gender job. I just view it as, if you’re good at it and you like it, you should do it.”

Aside from umpiring, Pawol is an artist, with degrees from the Pratt Institute and Hunter College, who has worked part-time as an eighth-grade art teacher.

Pawol breaking an MLB gender barrier comes 28 years after Violet Palmer became the NBA's first female referee and 10 years after Sarah Thomas became the NFL's first woman on-field official. France's Stéphanie Frappart was the first woman to referee a men's World Cup game when she took charge of the match between Germany and Costa Rica in 2022.