Throughout the history of Chicano film and literature, gender roles and gender specific stereotypes have played a monumental role, defining an entire generation of cinema. Whether it is the Latin lover and his irrepressible charm, the machismo who demonstrates extreme strength, the Dark Lady who invokes desire from men of every race, or the influential and hard working women who overcome insurmountable obstacles. In the film "Salt of the Earth," directed by Herbert J. Biberman, the gender roles take a dramatic shift never seen before in Chicano film. The obvious differences in how society treats the men and the women of this mining town are quickly made clear; the men work and are part of the union while the women stay home and take care of the family. These men, and particularly those men from this generation with Mexican heritage, often saw women as weak and nearly useless in anything other than child rearing. This dependence seen in women of this time period was largely due in part to economics. The excessive gender distinction that created men as the working class prevented women from seeking means to become economically independent, thus never allowing them to act freely or to make key decisions regarding their position in life. In the early twentieth century, Mexican women adhered to strict gender roles; while Roman Quintero was forced to deal with increasingly poor work conditions, his wife Esperanza could only continue to run their home as she passively waited for change to come. Esperanza had literally no power within her home, or the wider community, so that the concerns she had for practical matters were almost completely ignored by the activities of the male Union activists. The women within the mining community were consistently treated with the same patronizing disdain that the Anglo workers displayed toward their Mexican counterparts. However, as time went on she and several of her peers found the strength and power of self-motivation to challenge and resist the limitations their gender had enforced upon them. "I felt that if Johnny was going to be active in the union, why shouldn't I? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. We felt that the union is not for the men only, it's our unio