A theme that Shakespeare treat several times in his plays is the sexual mistrust of women and their subsequent testing and vindication. It appears that men “perceiving sexuality as power over women, fear its loss through female betrayal,” (VIII, 41). Specifically I am choosing to look at three plays, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, and Antony and Cleopatra, in order to examine the different ways in which females in these plays, Desdemona, Hero, and Cleopatra, cope with the male insecurities that they are confronted with. In so doing, I hope to point out that Shakespeare’s reasoning in continually bringing up the gender struggle. Which is, in my definition, that he is actually arguing for male-female equality in love, marriage, and the marriage bed.