Gender Inequalities

   In the book The House on Manga Street, a series of vignettes by Sandra Cisnero, the gender inequality is highly noticeable. Men aren't necessarily treated better, but they get away with more and aren't pushed to do as much work as the women do.
    In the vignette titled "Marin" it says, "She says he didn't get a job yet, but she's saving the money she gets from selling Avon and taking care of her cousins," (page 26). Marin is putting in quite a lot of effort in order to marry and live with her boyfriend, who lives in Puetro Rico, but he hasn't even gone out and gotten himself a job yet. People just accept this- they don't find it unfair or uneven, and they don't try to persuade Marin that this boy isn't worth it. They've been trained to think that the woman has to be a strong, hard worker, but the man barely has to do any work at all. This is also shown in another quote from the same vignette, "When the light in her aunt's room goes out, Marin lights a cigarette and it doesn't matter if it's cold out or if the radio doesn't work or if we've got nothing to say to each other," (page 27). Here, once again, is the imbalance. The girls are out there in the cold, waiting and waiting for some hormone driven boy to sweep them off their feet. They've already made it very easy for any boy to walk up and make a move. They've already done all of the hard work. Because women, of course, MUST do all of the work in order to make something, even a relationship, happen.