Gender Bias & Discrimination in The Handmaid’s Tale & The Piano Lesson

Gender is an inevitable thing that people cannot change about themselves making it impossible to escape the cruel injustices that we face on a daily basis. Gender bias and discrimination exist all over the world not only United states. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, she writes about a dystopian society called the Gilead in which women are deprived of their rights and live under male domination simply because they are women, and therefore are only meant for a position of get no opportunity or powerless. Somewhat, The Play The Piano lesson by August Wilson, is a play which focuses on the lives of the Charles family who are African American and their heirloom a family’s history under slavery. The main them in this movie is conflict about the piano between brother and sister. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano to be able to buy a land where his ancestors were slaves, but Bernice insists on keeping the piano in memory of their great grandmother and son whose faces carved on the piano. Therefore, gender bias and discrimination refer to the socially constructed preference for one gender over the other. As a social problem, gender bias can appear in various contexts such as, the educational system, the work environment and economy, families, and religious. However, I focused mostly on gender bias and discrimination injustice because research shows that gender bias and discrimination disproportionately affects women, mainly because of the patriarchal system embedded within the social structure of a given society. Likewise, the cultural and social obstacles have impacted and shaped the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale and the play The piano lesson through the social injustices of gender bias and discrimination.

Gender bias has consequences certain social roles in society, depending upon who fills the role. Such as, female dominant roles as nursing, childcare, or stay at home parenting are considered less masculine and are therefore viewed as less valuable in society. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale the society views women as less than man and society treated them powerless. In the society of Gilead men being equated with roles of power and women with domestic servitude. Therefore, the consequence of gender bias depicted within Gilead, where men are named according to military rankings and women are used solely as tools of reproduction. According to the novel, “Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing” (Atwood 135). In the society of Gilead that men are hold the all power not the women because they think women are useless, they cannot able to hold any power. Likewise, “Where the missing Girl” of Explorations in Economic History explained the same issue the consequences of gender bias impacted in European societies that parents seem to have treated their sons and daughters differently throughout childhood. Research found that in 19th century, the livings standards of girls, relative to boys, seem to have deteriorated when they grew up, especially in economic conditions. In domestic chores also probably led to greater deprivation for older girls. Also, research shows that Spain in 19th century women faced sever discrimination in many amounts by legally subordinated to their fathers and husbands, women were expected to remain within the domestic province. There is gender bias has also involved other kinds of mistreatment towards girls. According to the research, “A glimpse of the existing son preference can be discerned from a popular proverb: ‘Wish I had a boy, even if he becomes a thief” (Beltran, Francisco, and Domingo 3). This such a male oriented society where male get preferential attention than female. Additionally, it appears that boys were breastfed longer than girls and that might have resulted in a greater likelihood of girls falling ill. The influence of family intervention favoring male infants have more important. Furthermore, gender bias can affect females in their daily life. The resource Women’s Inheritance, Household Allocation, and Gender Bias shows that how families are avoided giving their rightful land. This is because they bring the issue is that they saved this land for dowry payments when daughter get marry or an investment in education. But the main issue is when parents realize that their children’s education quality is low or poor then they take their sons out of school to train them in farming or nonfarming related skills, thereby increasing their future earnings p