The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros highlights a number of gender disparities in both the home and workplace for women in the 1990s 60s and 70s. From the beginning of the book, Esperanza realizes that men and women live in "separate worlds" and that women are almost powerless in her society. The culture of this period in which women were expected to be submissive was especially rampant in poor neighborhoods, such as the predominantly Spanish street of Esperanza. Women endured the strain of having to get up so early, the confinement in their homes, and the mental and physical abuse to which their husbands subjected them. Women were even economically shackled to men, not only because they earned much less. In 1970, for example, women's income as a proportion of men's income was 54.8%, but that was because they often needed their father's or husband's signature to obtain credit or purchase larger items. All these issues allude to the fact that women of Esperanza's time had little to no freedom and had to rely on male figures in their lives, which often proved disastrous. The issue of gender roles and male/female power dynamics in the 1960s and 1970s is raised in panel 40, “Linoleum Roses.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In this vignette, Sally, still in middle school, I might add, marries a man to escape her father's tyranny and abuse. Sally actually manages to free herself from her father, but then becomes trapped in the good graces of another man. In the book, Esperanza describes Sally's situation as “he won't let her talk on the phone. And he doesn't let her look out the window. And he doesn't like her friends, so no one can visit her unless she's working. He stays at home because he is afraid to go out without his permission." We saw this happen to many other women in the book, including Esperanza's great-grandmother and Rafaela. Women were not allowed to pursue what they wanted in life because of the ridiculous power men had over them. To escape one man, she had to be chained by another man. Sally was so manipulated and abused in this situation that she didn't even want to walk out the door for fear of what her husband would do. On the other hand, Sally's husband has isolated her from the rest of society so that she belongs only to him. Looking out the window is the last hope and pleasure of many of the trapped women of Mango Street, but Sally's husband denies her even this. As for the issue of men with their controlling nature and patriarchal environment in the workplace and at home, I feel like every woman has experienced some victimization in this area. It has been deeply ingrained in American society for hundreds of years that men typically hold authority. I completely agree with Cisneros' approach on this issue and how he represents it in the story through each woman in the tale of Mango Street. Because the treatment of women throughout history is not necessarily a topic that can be debated. It happened, it's happening again, it's as simple as that. The images created by Cisneros of women looking out windows, unable to go beyond the walls of their homes, fully capture the aspects that arise from institutionalized gender roles. In panel 31 Esperanza describes Rafaela's situation, "[she] is locked in the house because her husband is afraid that Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to be seen" (Cisneros 79). Rafaela sacrificed her freedom because her role as..