Equal pay for women

Newsday reported As a Reagan White House attorney in 1984, John G. Roberts criticized three Republican congresswomen for supporting the "radical" idea of "comparable worth" to create pay equality between men and women.

The radical idea was not equal pay for equal worth, but that someone could accurately compare two radically different jobs and somehow determine they had the same "value" to the employer.

Among the women was Olympia Snowe, now a senator from Maine, and key moderate member of the Senate, who will be voting on Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. "I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept," he wrote. "Their slogan may as well be 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "