<P> The Handmaid's Tale has received widespread critical acclaim and its first season won eight Primetime Emmy Awards from thirteen nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, becoming the first series on a streaming service to win an Emmy for Outstanding Series . It also won Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series--Drama and Best Actress for Elisabeth Moss . </P> <P> In May 2018, Hulu announced that the series had been renewed for a third season . </P> <P> In the near future, fertility rates collapse as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution . With this chaos, the totalitarian, theonomic government of "Gilead" establishes rule in the former United States in the aftermath of a civil war . Society is organized by power - hungry leaders along with a new, militarized, hierarchical regime of fanaticism and newly created social classes, in which women are brutally subjugated, and by law are not allowed to work, own property, handle money, or read . </P> <P> Worldwide infertility has resulted in the conscription of the few remaining fertile women in Gilead, called "Handmaids", according to an extremist interpretation of the Biblical account of Bilhah . They are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape by their male masters in order to become pregnant and bear children for those men and their wives . </P>

What year does the handmaid's tale show take place