ministers ultimately decided that women's education drained the colonial budget and, therefore, was not desirable. The official reason for ignoring women's education was that local custom would not allow it; in reality, diplomatic records show that the colonial administration considered it an unnecessary expense.
             Although colonial policies often worsened the position of women, they ultimately produced an elite that was armed with ideas and methods of resisting the colonizers and, at the same time, pressing for reform and change at home. Women had already achieved much knowledge in religious matters, even to the point of teaching other female scholars the traditional sciences of Islam. With the spread of the printing press, women, like men, could more easily spread their writings to the public.
             The construction of gender roles and relations within the social setting roles and relations are changing. The boundaries characterized by the weight of Islam and authenticity in gender discourse, ideas on women's exclusion from public space, female domesticity, and their restriction to indirect access to power all reflect a past in which the gender system undergirded a family-based organization of access to wealth and
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