Elaborate on "Needle and thread for women , whiplash and mules for men" in The House of bernarda alba

Bernarda has very firm ideas about what a woman should do - "needle and thread," which speaks to demestic service and loneliness – whereas men get to express their liveliness outside. What's perhaps most depressing of all is that Bernarda has not only accepted this truth (so has Magdalena, after all), but that Bernarda deliberately reinforces this order, with a type of perverse glee. She has come to believe that women are naturally inferior, which means that those under her authority are unlikely to ever transcend their limitations.