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Education for Liberation or Domestication? Female Education in Colonial Swaziland

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Women and the Colonial Gaze
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Abstract

The issue of female education under colonial powers and the impact that it had on the cultures of the colonized is gaining in importance among colonial historians, feminist scholars, and education specialists. While academic research addressing the British and French use of formal educational systems as a means to gain power, produce a semiskilled labor class, and spread European culture has flourished, only recent research has examined different colonial philosophies regarding the education of females as distinct from males. Colonial educational policy, curriculum design, and targeted enrollments worked together to provide a different educational experience for boys and girls in many parts of Africa, including Swaziland. Furthermore, the interaction of these formal educational policies, together with Swazi traditional, patriarchal practices, may have worked cooperatively to weaken what power and status Swazi women had previously enjoyed in society.

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Notes

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© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Booth, M.Z. (2002). Education for Liberation or Domestication? Female Education in Colonial Swaziland. In: Hunt, T.L., Lessard, M.R. (eds) Women and the Colonial Gaze. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523418_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523418_15

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-333-77351-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52341-8

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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