In this last chapter the role of women in the colonial project will be explored. Until the 1970s it was generally assumed in colonial histories that white women were more racist than white men. In the 1970s, and more particularly the 1980s, feminist historians have re-read the colonial record to claim that the peculiarly racist white woman was a projection of male historians and colonists. The mechanisms for measuring non-racist relations, for example sexual relations across the race divide, are inappropriate to discussions concerning white women's race relations. Not only did women less often participate in such relations, but white men's participation in fact rarely evidenced a lack of racism. On the other hand, recent attempts to redeem the white woman abroad have come under criticism, particularly from Third-world women. These more recent readings of history re-assert the privilege of race that white women had over both indigenous men and women. This chapter explores the relations between white women and indigenous women in colonial settings and the debate concerning white women's role in the ‘ruin of empire’.

Women in the colonial project

‘Colonisation is essentially a masculine act: to conquer, to penetrate, to possess, to inseminate’. Of the three imperialist aims—economic expansion, affirmation of national power and the civilising mission—only the third readily incorporated women. The impact of economic ‘development’ in which colonial rulers perpetuated their patriarchal values, widened the already existing gap between men and women in conquered societies.