This was a cartoon I drew to highlight the opportunity imbalance between men and women in real life, as well as more specifically to Gilead where women are forbidden from being literate. While this cartoon may look simplistic, I tried to incorporate many hidden meanings which can evoke analysis from the audience. A couple deliberate choices I made were the colour of the two sides: I made the male side blue in comparison to the pink on the female side, I think this really conforms to the stereotypes of men and women in general. It gets the audience to immediately make the connection to what the bigger meaning of the cartoon is. Secondly, I made these steps and varied the size of the steps to show the ease of achieving that particular thing for each gender. It represents the difficulties woman face for the exact same thing, education, which is almost handed on a platter to the commanders of Gilead. Lastly, another one of the many deliberate choices I made was to put the starting point for men and handmaids at two different heights, as well as putting the female’s ‘Job Door’ higher. My thought process behind this was to further emphasise the opportunity differences that commanders and handmaids have in Gilead where the dystopian lands presents this power imbalance in its most extreme form.
