Sorry, this tale didn't convince me.
I know that many readers consider it as a warning to women' in the face of rising chauvinism and puritanism in our society, but something doesn't feel right.
For one thing, there's no real explanation of how and why things deteriorated so fast so definitely. There's no explanation about the life and conditions of the lowest ranks of that society. Do the women who are at the bottom of the social ladder continue to have babies? Or does society as a whole rely only on the handmaids? And furthermore, how can the author even think that healthy young males would meekly accept the no-sex ban for a considerable length of time? Even in the Muslim society, which closely resembles the fantasy world Mrs. Atwood created, men manage to have outlets to their sexual drive even if rules and prohibitions are strict.
Seems to me like the author doesn't know men at all. As for the women portrayed here, they're meek, petty, jealous, envious and in constant competition with each other. This isn't who I or my women friends are, which leads me to believe that this author's misunderstanding includes women as well as men.
So I really didn't like ithis book, and if the author's message was to warn women that they might end up as mere reproductive objects, it could have been given with less paranoia and less sexism than what I found here.