This thesis is a survey of the development of religious and secular colonial education for African girls and women in Afrique Occidentale Francaise, from 1819 to 1960. The historiography of colonial education in AOF has dismissed the education of African girls and women as they were numerically too insignificant to merit any special attention. / This study argues that an examination of educational objectives, institutions and curricula provides a rare and valuable window on French colonial discourse on African women. It was a discourse fed by sexism and ethnocentrism, that ultimately intended to refashion women's gender identities and roles to approximate those prescribed by the French ideology of domesticity. / The system took the form of a number of domestic sciences training centres that aimed to change the very social definition of what constituted an African woman--to remake her according to the Euro-Christian, patriarchal ideal of mother, wife and housekeeper. Colonial educators argued that such a woman, especially in her role as mother, was the best conduit for the propagation of French mores, practices, and most importantly, submission to French hegemony. / The final decades of formal colonial rule in AOF saw the emergence of a small African male bourgeoisie. Members of this class, called "assimiles", accepted to varying degrees French language, lifestyle and values. This study further examines how many of them embraced the ideology of domesticity and became active in the debate on African women's education and the need to control and transform their gender identities.

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