What choices/limitations do characters face based on gender in The handmaid tales

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Gender portrayal in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Feminist theory moves away its assumptions, analytic lens, and topical focus away from the male viewpoint and experience and toward that of women. In doing so, the theory illuminates a light on various social problems, happenstances, and issues that are usually ignored or misidentified by the historically dominant male perspective within social theory. Feminists have talked a great deal about power, so much so that it may seem as if nothing more remains to be said on the subject (Allen 59). The Handmaid’s Tale has shone light on this issue, where different characters are given gender roles, which gives them specific choices to make and a number of limitations therein.
First, the book explores women subjugation and oppression in a male dominated society and how they attempt to fight it out to gain independence and individuality amongst themselves. It has a main character Offred, whose name in essence means ‘of Fred’, considering Handmaids are forbidden to use their own names, thus assuming their master’s names in possessive forms. This use of possessive form illustrates the limitation of being a handmaid, a woman who is viewed as less equal from their main counterparts. There is more than one kind of freedom ... Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it (Atwood, 210). Gilead is a society that runs on hierarchy, with huge gender differences. After the revolution, all women are fired from their jobs and have their bank accounts drained, leaving the main character Offred fully dependent on her master. She stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her (Atwood, 270), seems to affirm this.
Secondly, women are portrayed as mere tools used for procreation and baby making purposes. Gilead society holds in high regard the production by white women, and they are categorized in hierarchy according to their reproductive capacity. Bl...