[Excerpt …] By 1957, 15 percent of the African women living in the colonial city of Usumbura, Ruanda-Urundi (present-day Bujumbura, Burundi), were participating in a government-sponsored educational and social welfare program. 1 Foyers sociaux , or social homes, were Belgian domestic training institutions for African women, founded for married women living in colonial urban centers. Some women were learning to cook, mend, iron, and wash clothes, and how to wean their infants and decorate their homes, and a select few were being trained to work (for pay) as auxiliary aids or monitors in the classroom. European women circulated in the African quarters, visiting and inspecting the students' homes and helping women prepare for annual most-beautiful-house contests. Graduation ceremonies, holiday celebrations, and displays of students' projects were other annual events sponsored by a foyer social that marked in a public, ritualized way the continuity of the program and the progress of its students. A colonial centerpiece, Usumbura's foyer was proudly celebrated in Belgium's annual reports to the United Nations and served to legitimize Belgian administration of this trust territory. 2 Despite the many historical studies that have appeared since the 1970s about the impact of colonialism on African women, surprisingly little attention has been paid to colonial efforts to domesticize women. 3 Since the 1970s, and especially since Ester Boserup pointed out that colonial notions of development for women meant "training for the home," 4 historians have been refining interpretations of changes in African women's economic lives. Yet, the study of the relations between ideology and the construction of gender under colonialism has been slighted. 5 In refusing to equate women with domesticity, historians have acknowledged this equation as a colonial legacy without exploring its historical content and implications. 6 1. Usumbura, Foyer Social, Rapport annuel, 1957, 1, 4, 9, Bureau de la Mairie, Bujumbura. The total female ...