In the early decades of the twentieth century, the South African state initiated a range of measures to educate rural people. While most of them, such as agricultural schools and demonstration services, targeted men, a few offers also extended to women and received the support of women's organizations and farmers' associations. These services, such as training in cooking, hygiene, child health, and home decoration, were premised on a separate spheres model that confined rural women to the home. At a time of women's increased mobility and involvement in wage labor, domestic education reads like a conservative, patriarchal response. However, my presentation also emphasizes the ways in which rural women, both black and white, used these measures to their own ends, turning the ideal of rural domesticity and motherhood into a political arena.