In the book Second Class Citizen, Emecheta Buchi uses gender and sexuality to express the many ways society treated women and the obstacles they faced overcome. Buchi uses this book and the many issues discussed in the book as a tool in discussing gender and sexuality as a social construct; however, the ways of the world and the opinions of society fail to see how the way women were treated back then was anything but normal. Adah, the protagonist of the book is a little girl who desires a Western education but is denied the opportunity to have one because the simple fact of being a female and the privilege of school go to the males of the family even though she is the one who he wants education. The theme used openly throughout the book is that of the vehement animosity towards gender discrimination often found in the culture of Adah's people. Buchi describes how African women are discriminated against and victimized by the older men and women in their lives. Emecheta's novel, Second Class Citizen, opens with Adah already discriminated against by her family and readers know this because in the opening paragraphs Adah It is stated that: "She was a girl who came when everyone was waiting and expecting a boy, so since she was such a disappointment to his tribe, no one thought to record his birth, it was so insignificant" (p. 7-8). In the first sentences of the book, the reader is well aware that girls/women were not welcome in their family or tribe. Females in the family are more of a burden than they are considered part of the family. However, Adah feels that the greatest discrimination comes from what older women expected and when she talks about wanting to go... middle of paper... the water carrier, the cook and any other assorted chores that she family needed her to perform. Ultimately, when she marries Francis, the oppression Adah must endure is one no woman must face. When Adah wanted to go to work, Francis' father's response to Francis was: “You are a fool of a man... Where will he take the money? …The money is for you, don't you see? Let her go work for a million Americans and bring their money here to this house. It's your luck. You made a good choice in marriage, son” (p. 25). With her husband's consent and her father's persuasion, Adah went to work, but her money was now responsible for paying the family's rent, education for Francis's seven younger sisters, feeding herself and for his family and in providing sustenance. payment for his education while he was in London to become “educated”..”