OT As Americans Celebrate 19th Amendment, Bush Picks Supreme Court Nominee Who Argued Against Women's Rights

JOHN ROBERTS ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS

As Women's Equality Day came and went on August 26th, we can reflect on
the character of the man Bush would have be the next Supreme Court
justice. Below are some of Roberts' opinions on Closing the Wage Gap,
Education, and Title IX. This is a small sampling of the schmorgasbord
of Reactionary beliefs held by John Roberts, SCOTUS nominee.

Lets watch.

CLOSING THE WAGE GAP
PROGRESS: Wage Gap Has Been Closing After 1963 Equal Pay Act; Women
Earn 76 Cents on the Dollar Compared to Men.
Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the wage gap has closed by half a cent
on the dollar per year.

Yet, there is much work to do. According to the 2004 United States
Census, currently, women earn just 76 cents on the dollar compared with
men.

The Census Bureau reported that in 2003, median annual earnings for
full-time working women declined to $30,724 - while men's earnings
remained unchanged, at $40,668. [University Wire, 4/21/05; Institute
for Women's Policy Research, 8/27/04]

REACTIONARY: Roberts Argued Against Closing the Wage Gap
In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain
from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending
in Congress.

He concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace
discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly
objectionable".

He said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing
employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth"
-- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."[Washington
Post, 8/19/05]

EDUCATION
PROGRESS: Number of Women in College Has Steadily Increased; Women Have
Outnumbered Men Since 1978 [a fact I appreciated when in college].
Women students have outnumbered male students since 1978. In 2000 there
were 2 million more women than men enrolled in college.

In the United States, 200,000 more women than men earned a bachelor's
degree in 2004.

While men comprise 51 percent of the college-age population in the
United States, women account for 54 percent of full-time college
students, earn more than 56 percent of the bachelor's degrees every
year, and graduate in four years or less at a rate 10 percent higher
than that of men.
[Pell Institute; Bradenton Herald, 5/22/05; National Center for
Education Statistics; University Wire, 4/15/05]

REACTIONARY: Roberts Questioned Women Going To Law School
His remark on whether homemakers should become lawyers came in 1985 in
reply to a suggestion from Linda Chavez, then the White House's
director of public liaison.

Chavez had proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey, in a contest
sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had changed
their lives after age 30.

Arey had been a schoolteacher who decided to change careers and went to
law school.

Roberts said in his memo that he saw no legal objection to her taking
part in the Clairol contest.

Then he added a personal aside: "Some might question whether
encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common
good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide." [Washington
Post, 8/19/05]

TITLE IX
PROGRESS: Title IX Increased the Number of High School Female Athletes
by 9 Times, and College Female Athletes by 5 Times.
Title IX allowed more than 2.8 million girls to compete in high school
sports in 2004 -- a 900 percent increase since 1972.

In 1971-72, only 294,000 girls in comparison to 3.7 million boys played
varsity sports in the nation's high schools.

Thirty years later, in 2001-2002, boys' participation had increased
slightly, to less than 4 million.

That year, 2.8 million girls played high school varsity sports. In
1971-72, men in college sports outnumbered women by 170,384 to 29,977
-- nearly six to one.

Thirty years later, women's participation had increased more than
five-fold, and the numbers were 212,140 men to 155,513 women. [The
Herald-Sun,, Durham, NC, 7/24/05]

REACTIONARY: Roberts Proposed Limiting the Role of Title IX
In a memorandum to the attorney general in August 1982, he expressed
support for a federal district court decision limiting the reach of a
law against sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving
federal aid.

Judge Roberts said the law, called Title IX, applied only to specific
programs that received federal aid, not to the entire university that
maintained the programs.

"Under Title IX federal investigators cannot rummage willy-nilly
through institutions but can only go as far as the federal funds go,"
he wrote.
[New York Times, 7/27/05]