Female Role Models and Labor Force Participation: The Case of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

This paper investigates how social influences have contributed to growth in female labor force participation, documenting how the role models of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League impacted female labor market outcomes between 1940 and 1950. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, comparing cities with teams to geographically nearby cities without teams, we find that female labor force participation in cities with an AAGPBL team increased by 1.8% points relative to otherwise similar cities without a team, and female employment rates increased by a similar amount.