Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)
III. Soziale Ordnungen / Social orders - Lisa A. Lindsay: Money, Marriage and Masculinity on the Colonial Nigerian Railway: A Case Study of Imperialism, Railways and Gender in Africa
Lisa A. Lindsay sponsoring children from his extended family. But she emphasized that he was the primary provider.17 These examples reveal something of the fragility of the breadwinner ideal among wage earners. Only the most highly paid were able to support their households without assistance - a situation not unique to Nigeria - and furthermore, women’s work outside the home was widely accepted. Yet as we have seen, money and expenditures were vital to masculine identities. Stressing their breadwinning capabilities was a way for men to exert their importance and power at home and, as the next section indicates, demand improved wages and benefits from their colonial employer. Male Breadwinners and Family Allowances During the depression of the 1930s (and even later), European officials and employers argued that formal sector wages could be kept low because men were assisted financially by their wives. Workers, however, stressed that women’s trading income was not enough to keep a family afloat, and that men should be considered primary breadwinners. For example, in response to union petitions, the Bridges Commission on the Cost of Living in Lagos (composed of an African majority) suggested in 1941 that although the wives of most government workers earned separate incomes, they were not wholly self-supporting and the costs of dependents should be factored in wage calculations.1* The support of dependents also figured in trade unionists’ demands for parity with European workers in Nigeria. Union officials had long resented discrepancies between the salaries and working conditions of Europeans and Africans. One of their chief grievances was that European officials were entitled to separation allowances when African workers who also maintained two homes were not. These “children’s (separate domicile) allowances” were to compensate for the fact that officials’ children lived apart from them and reflected the administration’s assumption that European men were responsible for the maintenance of their children at home. Trade unionists argued that the same situation applied to Nigerian workers compelled to relocate away from their 17 Interview with Olukemi Alabi, assisted by Funmilayo Carew, April 12, 1994, Ibadan, Nigeria. '* Bridges,A.F.B.: Report on the Cost of Living Committee. Lagos 1942, p. 101. 238
