Earning Like a Woman: Salaries versus Marginal Revenue Products in the AAGBPL and MLB: 1947-1952

Abstract

This article exploits heretofore unexplored data from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that existed in the United States from 1943 to 1954 to measure and compare the economic loss to male and female professional baseball players. While female ballplayers earned a fraction of male salaries, they captured nearly twice as much of the revenues that they generated, indicating a smaller degree of exploitation. We hypothesize that in addition to the difference in structures of the two leagues, reservation wages explain the large difference in exploitation rates between the male and female players.