Vol. 6, No. 10 October 8, 2002

The contradictions of feminism have been amply displayed of late, but they have not drawn the response one would expect. Consider the strange case of Marianne Stanley, coach of the Washington Mystics basketball team of the Women’s National Basketball Association.

In 1975, Stanley was an all-American guard for Immaculata College, where she became pregnant, concealed this news from her coach, and kept playing, subsequently giving birth to a daughter. Stanley divorced and went into coaching at Old Dominion University, winning three national championships. In 1993, Stanley sued the University of Southern California for sexual discrimination, demanding pay parity for men's and women's head coaches. She lost, but the case made her something of a feminist celebrity.

At the University of California at Berkeley, Stanley's teams fared poorly, and in 1998 she hired a recruiting coach, Sharrona Alexander, from Troy State University in Alabama, a successful school good at attracting talented recruits. But when Alexander told the head coach she was pregnant, Stanley gave her the choice of aborting her child or keeping her job. This is not what pro-choice means, and it is also against the law.

Stanley believed that pregnancy would prevent Alexander from doing her job, which is medical nonsense and positively insulting. Stanley herself did not find pregnancy a hindrance to her own college basketball career, much more strenuous than Alexander's job, which was recruiting. Pat Summit, head basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, a perennial powerhouse, worked into her ninth month and gave birth to her son on a recruiting trip.

When Alexander exercised her right to choose by declining to have an abortion, Stanley summarily fired her. The firing took place in the middle of a midwestern recruiting trip, leaving the young woman in desperate straits.

Alexander sued for pregnancy discrimination, and in 2000 won a settlement of $115,000 from UC Berkeley, which hushed up the incident, not Stanley's first lapse. In 1997, UC Berkeley also paid $20,000 to an African-American student whom Stanley had called a "black bastard."

After the Washington Post broke the Alexander story in September, there was little comment from high-profile feminists, which reveals a continuing double standard. Imagine the furor if a male coach had told a recruiter that being pregnant would prevent her from fulfilling her duties, or demanded that she have an abortion to keep her job. A male coach who did that would be fired. Stanley was not. Indeed, after this incident, Berkeley continued to recommend her for other jobs.

Marianne Stanley leaves little doubt, for those who still have any, that women can be as ignorant, tyrannical, and discriminatory as men. And evasive as well. Stanley failed to tell her current employer, the Washington Mystics, about her legal scrapes at Berkeley. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, she has been spared the criticism that her actions deserve. While Stanley, WNBA coach of the year last season, has been given immunity, the victim has found herself an outcast.

Despite her favorable record, Sharrona Alexander, now Sharrona Reaves, has been unable to land a coaching job, even from the school that wanted to hire her before Berkeley showed interest. Now 30 and a mother of two, she is working in a clothing store. Feminists have failed to reach out in solidarity.

UC Berkeley, which fancies itself as a progressive school dedicated to justice and helping the downtrodden, could certainly use Alexander's recruiting skills. Their record in four years with Marianne Stanley at the helm was a pathetic 35 wins and 75 losses. But the campus might now be family friendly. Stanley's replacement, Caren Horstmeyer, had a son shortly after being hired.

Sally Pipes is the President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.