Gender Role In The Handmaid's Tale?

Gender has always been a rather controversial topic in society for centuries now. Several researchers, theories and writers have tried depict, analyse, question and challenge in their own way the question of gender roles, norms, and expectation. Canadian author Margaret Atwood took her own spin on restrictive society and the response that women undertook through her book The Handmaid’s Tale. The book was adapted into movie and more recently into a tv show. The narrative explores the themes of women in servitude to misogyny in a patriarchal society and the different means by which these women gain freedom.
The storyline is set in dystopian world in which a new nation has been formed- the Republic of Gilead (the United States one would assume).

It was shocking to see how the author and the movie/ show directors were able to accurately portrays what it feels like to be living in that society. With everything that is happening currently,and the history of the world a future like this is not inevitable. It all started slowly with the malfunctioning debit cards, the mass layoffs of women at work, the suspended Constitution, the war and resulted in women downgraded to second-class citizens. Just like how especially now,in America primarily, the new presidency (although not the sole cause) has led to a more evident misogynistic society ( women’s health-birth control, planned parenthood, abortion etc…). Cases of Rape, sexual violence, violence against the LGBTQ community are now more evident than before (just like in the movie). White supremacist, extreme nationalist are more confident than ever and openly show their beliefs. At this rate, Gilead might be our

Gilead is a dictatorship that promotes a rape culture in the purpose of degrading women with pornography. It controls women by elevating them, fetishizing motherhood, praising femininity, but defining it in terms of service to men and children. It’s hard to say that this is more relevant now than before but lets face it, we lived in society where the president of one of the “most powerful” country in the world talks about women as if they were squeeze toys, who brags about grabbing women by their genitals, who speaks at an anti LGBTQ conference, who implied a tough female journalist was on her period, whose administration gathered a room full of male politicians to discuss women’s health coverage and what women should do with their bodies, Gilead might not be a so distant future