"I Studied with the Nuns, Learning to Make Blouses": Gender Ideology and Colonial Education in Mozambique

Abstract

Testimony from Mozambican garment workers and nurses about how they valued their own experiences of colonial mission schooling represents one aspect of the complex ideologies related to domestic science education for African women.' Criticism of the gender bias of such programs ignores the reality that some women were able to use that education to enter into new arenas of work during and after the colonial era. In this paper I will examine the history of girls' education in colonial Mozambique in order to better explain the opportunities for schooling offered to African families and the choices they made for their daughters. Portuguese colonial officials and mission teachers believed that education was an opportunity to improve Mozambican women, and some Mozambican girls and women also saw schooling as a route to better lives. Yet very few boys or girls were able to attend any school, so that at the end of colonialism Mozambique had an exceptionally high rate of illiteracy.2 In that larger context, girls had fewer opportunities than boys to attend school regularly, and the girls' curriculum featured a gender-differentiated course of study that emphasized domestic science skills. It might appear that the introduction of Western ideas about female domesticity would bring restrictions to women who previously had had the primary responsibility for agricultural production in their communities. However, that approach discounts the fact that some girls greatly valued the benefits accruing from their education. In particular, women in an advantageous class position were able to