Serena, Jen Pawol and the ongoing fight for women’s equality in sports | Opinion
Serena Williams is making a comeback of sorts in tennis at age 44. Good for her — although many or most won’t see it that way.
This is about women in sports, and how the fight for equality goes on in 2026, not just for females you have never heard of fighting for a chance, but for superstars who can’t give up what defines them.
Tom Brady played quarterback in the NFL until he was 45. LeBron James is still active in the NBA at 41. But listen to the incredulity Serena will be hearing about coming out of retirement to play doubles in a WTA event in London next week. She last played at the 2022 U.S. Open. Whether this begins a full comeback of singles and majors remains to be known.
All I see is a woman who’s a G.O.A.T. in her sport, her 23 Grand Slam wins the most in the Open era. Her legacy is in cement, above and beyond tarnish. I wouldd liken her to Michael Jordan. The legendary Chicago Bull ended as a Washington Wizard at age 40, then embarked on a team-ownership gambit that was wildly unsuccessful.
He’s still Michael Jordan. What happened late did not diminish that, nor will it for Serena.
Yet some will question why she is doing this in a way they never did Brady or Michael. Others on the far conservative side may wonder why a woman with children ages 8 and 2 isn’t satisfied to be a mom. And some likely hoping she fails will feign concern about her “tarnishing her legacy.”
The answer to all that: It’s her life, not yours, not ours.
▪ Jen Pawol was behind the plate Sunday as the Yankees beat the A’s in Sacramento. Her performance was unremarkable, barely noticeable — where home plate umpires like to be, especially in the age of ABS (automated balls and strikes).
Pawol is worth attention, though, worthy of continuing credit, as a trailblazer, the first female in MLB to work as an umpire for regular season games. She’s from New Jersey, age 49. It has been a long climb. She was the seventh female ump to reach the minors. Pam Postela was the first in 1988 and wound up on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Headline: “The Lady Is An Ump.”
But Pawol was the first to reach the very top. The big leagues. She still isn’t one of 76 full-time umps; she’s a call-up, on call. But that’s enough for now. She earned the chance and is showing why.
She made history last August 9-10, Marlins at Braves, with her historic first game and then first at home plate. Rick Kranitz, then Atlanta’s pitching coach, made a fourth-inning mound visit to confer with his pitcher and catcher. It was taking awhile, so the home plate ump began walking toward the mound.
The crowd started cheering.
“I went out there, and then I started hearing the crowd,” Kranitz recalled. “They started [to applaud] and I said ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’ Then I saw [her] coming out. We all agreed, ‘Let’s let her come all the way out. Let’s get the crowd into this.’”
The reaction to MLB’s first female umpire hasn’t always been as kind. She was calling the plate for a Guardians-Reds game in this spring in March and blatantly missed a strike call right down the middle. ABS overturned her call. Social media was merciless. And yet it was another milestone:
In the ongoing fight for women’s equal rights, Pawol had proved a female baseball umpire can be second-guessed, proved wrong and humiliated by technology and mocked by howling fans on social media just like a man can. Congratulations? Hey, give baseball’s robots this much credit at least: They don’t see woman/man, just ball/strike.
Extra credit for Pawol because she chose as a profession a rather thankless one in which you wear heavy equipment and get booed, overturned and mocked but not rich.
Look, I’m not overselling Pawol’s place in history. This isn’t Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, Sally Ride or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But Pawol and what she has accomplished is a needed reminder that, in 2026, ceilings for women still exist and are still waiting to be challenged and shattered and eventually disappear.
One of those ceilings is that a 44-year-old woman can’t still play professional tennis.
▪ I found it a notable coincidence that, on the same day Pawol worked Sunday’s plate in a Yankees game, the French Open fined men’s tennis player Adolfo Daniel Vallejo of Paraguay $65,000 for openly misogynistic comments about respected veteran female chair umpire Ana Carvalho following a loss.
“This sort of match needs to be umpired by a man,” said Vallejo, as if that weren’t the least bit ridiculous. “It’s very difficult for a woman to do it. It has to be refereed by a man, because it’s a very demanding crowd and you need a lot of strength to go against the crowd.”
Suddenly it was not 2026. It was 1952 and a man was telling his wife to bring him the paper and another beer and stay in her place.
The 19th Amendment to give women the right to vote was ratified until 1920. My own mother was born before just before that was passed.
Women are still fighting for equality in a thousand ways.
When sports journalist Dianna Russini and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel had what appeared to be an extramarital affair exposed by the New York Post, Russini was forced out of her job and perhaps her career, while repercussions for Vrabel have been all but nonexistent.
In my own line of work, I’ve talked to many female sportswriters over the years about the sexist bull they endure from misogynist sports fans. Male writers like myself get a benefit of doubt we haven’t earned while females too often are denied theirs.
So here’s to Serena Williams, Jen Pawol, Ana Carvalho and all the rest who know what it’s like to have to fight a little harder, and know that the fight goes on.
