A group of NOW activists and allies protested today outside a Washington, D.C., radio station that airs The Rush Limbaugh Show, and the local community demonstrated its enthusiastic support. This action is part of NOW's Enough Rush campaign, which aims to end Limbaugh's hateful presence on the airwaves by targeting local radio stations that broadcast his show and local businesses that continue to advertise on it.

Limbaugh has a decades-long history of saying offensive things about women, people of color, poor people, immigrants and the LGBT community. But he finally went too far when he attacked Sandra Fluke personally on his show, calling her a "slut" and a "prostitute" for expressing her support for birth control coverage, and refusing to back down on his hate speech for three days.

Today, NOW activists, supporters, and staffers (including myself) spent the lunch hour protesting outside of WMAL 630 AM, the D.C. radio station that carries Limbaugh's show. At the sight of our homemade signs reading "No More Hate Speech" and "Enough Rush," passersby cheered and honked their car horns. These were women and men, teens and older adults, people driving mini-vans or delivery trucks or just out on a stroll. Countless numbers paused to give us a thumbs-up, tell us to keep up the good work, and shout their support. We were thrilled to find that not one casual observer made a negative comment toward us or expressed support of Limbaugh. Only a representative from a conservative media organization was confrontational. Could Rush's comrades be worried?!

On thing was clear: D.C. agrees that Rush is a bully. Let's keep up the momentum to get him off the air for good!

Local NOW chapters in New York City, West Palm Beach, Fla., and Phoenix, Ariz., also held actions at local stations today. Read more about the Enough Rush campaign and get involved.

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On April 9, 2012, the New York Times published an article about the strides women are making in Bangladesh -- my birth country. It has not been an easy journey for the nation, plagued by both natural and man-made adversities. Natural disasters devastate the small country on a regular basis; as one of the poorest and most densely populated nations in the world, it has few resources to respond to the crises. It is below sea level and losing land every year due to global climate change. Bangladesh has suffered colonialism for centuries -- first at the hands of the British and then Pakistan; it gained independence only 41 years ago after a bloody war in which Pakistani forces killed three million people through genocide. Despite the obstacles, Bangladesh has three percent more women in elected positions than the United States. In addition, it has had female heads of state for decades -- an advancement the U.S. has not been able to make during its 200-plus years of independence.

There are a few reasons why Bangladesh has progressed further in electing women than the U.S. First, Bangladesh has a quota system reserving seats for women in the parliament. You might argue against affirmative action, but in the U.S., we are just not getting there without that extra push.

Second, Bangladeshi girls can look up to Bengali women in leadership positions in the past and present. It makes a difference when the leaders of the two most powerful political parties in Bangladesh are women, each of whom has served as the head of state. In the U.S., however, women who run or serve in political office are subject to increasingly hostile gender-based double standards and slurs. During the 2008 presidential elections -- just when things should have been getting better, not worse -- Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin endured some of the most vicious attacks in recent history.

Third, Bangladeshi women are not constantly bombarded with news reports of how bad women have it in other nations. The U.S. media love to talk about the oppression of women in other cultures, particularly Muslim women. The implication is that gender-based violence is something that happens to other women. Many Americans -- even those working in the anti-violence field -- use the term "honor killings" to describe domestic violence incidents in Muslim communities, suggesting the inevitability of these acts, since they are supposedly part of Islam.

But violence against women is a problem in every country and in every culture; in fact, at least three women die each day in the U.S. due to domestic violence. There has been a lot of talk about the sexual assaults of women involved with the Arab Spring, but the story that did not receive as much national coverage was of a Syrian imam who told rape victims that they deserve to be honored. Creating the false notion that other cultures treat women worse sets up U.S. women to stop fighting sexism at home, because it makes us believe we have it much better than those "backward" countries. As a young feminist, I have heard too many of my American peers tell me that feminism is irrelevant because we have already achieved equality.

By no means are the countries I mentioned safe havens for women. As feminists, we should care about every woman on this planet. However, we must not allow the other side to make us complacent about the sexist abuses in our own backyard. We must learn lessons from our global peers on how to bring more women to the decision-making table. Only then can we achieve true equality.

As a young woman who is still in school, I have not fully entered the workforce yet. This means I have not experienced the wage gap firsthand, and it is not something I look forward to. Twenty years of my life were spent learning about the golden rule, fairness and equality, but research on Equal Pay Day reveals that what I've learned doesn't always apply.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data for full-time, year-round workers, women are paid on average only 77 percent of what men are paid; for women of color, the gap is significantly wider. These wage gaps stubbornly remain despite passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, back when women only earned 59 cents to a man's dollar.

Equal Pay Day was first recognized in 1996. At that time data showed women earning 72 cents for every dollar paid to men. Since then, the wage gap has only improved by five cents -- in fact, we've been stuck between 70 and 80 cents for more than two decades!

The wage gap is even seen in occupations that are mainly dominated by women. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report in 2010 showing that out of 111 occupations there were only four where women's weekly median earnings were higher than males, the top occupation being preparing and serving food, including fast food. Full-time workers in this field are paid on average $369 a week, which is barely enough to keep a family of three above the poverty line. On the other hand, the occupation with the biggest gap in men's favor is "personal financial advisor," which pays $1,381 a week on average.

When feminists talk about the wage gap, often the immediate response is that it is due to lifestyle choices made by women, not discrimination. Based on available research, I find that hard to believe. The American Association of University Women determined in a study that one year after graduating college -- a time when women and men should, absent discrimination, be on a level playing field -- women are paid on average only 80 percent of their male counterparts' wages.

It is time to practice what we preach. One of the first things we learn in school is to treat others like we would want to be treated ourselves, yet it seems to be the hardest principle to follow. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be paid less than someone performing their same job, so why is it acceptable to pay women less? Enough is enough. Let's end pay discrimination and eliminate the need to mark Equal Pay Day each year.

Lisa Wade at Sociological Images recently wrote about the history of the use of watermelon as a symbol of how "simple" black folks are. Wade does a great job of showing that this is not an innocent stereotype -- it was actively used to dehumanize black people and justify keeping them as slaves. The argument went: If a watermelon is all it takes to make black people happy, this indicates their suitability for slavery and un-suitability for citizenship. (Warning: the images on this page are pretty disturbing.)

Pretty horrifying, right? Well, at least we don't do that anymore. Or so we'd like to think. Soon afterward, a reader wrote in to tell Wade about this:

Yeah, that's real. That's a candy package featuring a covered-up, dewy-eyed white princess advertising the vanilla flavor and a bedroom-eyed black princess -- the only one in the Disney canon -- in a strapless dress advertising watermelon. This packaging was produced by a Fortune 100 company in 2012.
So much for this symbolism being a historical curiosity. Worse yet, notice how Princess Tiana's bare shoulders and direct, sultry stare contrasts with the demure styling and shy smile of Sleeping Beauty. This calls to mind the racist stereotype of Jezebel, the sexually insatiable black woman, which was used to justify the rape of black women and even to deny that it was possible to rape a black woman.

I've been in rooms where marketing decisions were made. Even in small organizations, several people -- from the big boss to the marketing staff to the graphic designer -- got a look at any product that would see the light of day. I'm not sure which possibility is more disturbing: that no one among Disney's highly educated and qualified staff objected to this, that someone did notice and didn't feel safe objecting, or that someone did object and got shot down. And these are the more charitable options! The ugliest possibility is that someone with decision-making power thought this was funny -- when a 10 second search on the Internet would have told them how horrifying it was.

Whatever actually happened inside the Magic Kingdom during this decision-making process, any of these possibilities strongly suggests that Disney needs to require that every person who came anywhere near the design or production of this incredibly racist packaging needs some cultural sensitivity training pronto. NOW.

Why is this a big deal? Well, imagine you're the black mother of a black child, and you come across this candy at the grocery store. You're angry and sad. You think about your enslaved ancestors and how images like this were used to rationalize their sub-human status and justify unspeakable violence toward them. And now one of the most beloved and successful companies in the world is using it to sell your child candy. What do you say to your child? How do you begin to express all this in the middle of Aisle 12? What a horrible moment for any of the millions of black mothers in this country! And how unnecessary -- all it would have taken was one person at Disney saying, "Um, wait a minute, y'all …"

Are you furious yet? Because we are. So here's what you can do:

If you see this at a local retailer, let the manager know you find it offensive and ask that it be removed from the shelves. Use this online form to write to Disney -- tell them they need to apologize and should institute cultural sensitivity training to ensure that staff who make these kind of decisions act in keeping with Disney's stated anti-discrimination policy and do not engage in this kind of offensive symbolism.

If your local chapter is mad about this, go protest at your local Disney store! Make a petition asking the company to pull the product and mandate cultural sensitivity training, and get people to sign it. Send the petition to Robert A. Iger, President and CEO, The Walt Disney Company, 500 South Buena Vista St, Burbank, CA, 91521.

March is National Women's History Month as well as the second anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Women everywhere and of all ages are coming forward to talk about how the Affordable Care Act has improved their lives both medically and financially. I, myself, can attest to how important having health care is to sustaining a healthy lifestyle. I graduated from college at the age of 20 in 2007. Since graduation, I have struggled to find a full-time job that would provide health benefits, and I also struggled to find a private insurance plan with a premium that I could afford to pay.

My experiences with private health insurance have been negative for two major reasons. Not only did I feel the disparities that come with being a young adult new to the workforce, but I also experienced the disparities of being a woman in my reproductive years. Finding a plan that would provide similar benefits and at a comparable cost of what many of my male friends were paying, proved to be impossible. During the time I purchased private insurance, I was working full time at a small art gallery with less than 10 employees. The owner could not afford to provide an employer-based insurance package. The best individual coverage I could afford was catastrophic insurance, which did protect me in case of major medical expenses and hospital visits but did not provide access to preventive services, basic primary care visits, prescriptions, mental health care or maternity care.

Currently, insurance companies are permitted to charge higher premiums based on age, gender and health status in 32 states and the District of Columbia. I researched two automatic quotes provided by ehealthinsurance.com, one for a 25-year-old female (non-smoker) living in Washington, D.C., and the other for a 25-year-old male (non-smoker) in D.C. The cheaper plan required a woman to pay $14 more per month than a man ($79 vs. $65 per month).

Effective Jan. 1, 2014, women and persons with pre-existing conditions will be protected against discrimination under new ACA law that will ban insurance companies from charging higher rates based on gender or health status.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, as of Sep. 23, 2010, I was permitted to join my parents' employer health plan, allowing me to reallocate the money I was spending on my private insurance policy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one million young adults ages 19-25 gained health insurance during the first three months of 2011, and many millions more will be able to stay on their parents' health plans. Since I have had coverage under the Affordable Care Act, I have gone to regular check ups, and have been able to receive the preventative services I believe are important for me to be able to live a healthy life.

Soon I will be 26, and I will have to find my own insurance again; however, the Affordable Care Act is making it easier for companies, especially small businesses, to provide health insurance to all of their employees. The ACA will also establish affordable insurance exchanges as well as place a cap on the amount private insurers can charge people for out-of-pocket fees. The Affordable Care Act will help women of all ages and from all walks of life access vital health care for themselves and their families. I am thankful for that.

This post is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival on What Health-Care Reform Means to Women.