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 port African family allowances. Still, it did recognize the legitimacy of union claims and endorsed a male breadwinner norm for Nigeria. Tudor Davies wrote, The sooner the male ceases to rely upon the economic contribution of the female to the family exchequer, the sooner will the wage structure be founded upon a more correct basis.21 For the next decade trade unionists pressed for the extension of family allowances to Africans. Government officials refused, at first arguing that Nigerians could be expected to move their families any place within the territory rather than maintain two homes.22 The 1946 Harrigan Commission, which addressed wages in the civil service, refused family allowances on the grounds that this was none of the government’s business and it would be too complicated in a West African context, where “the word ‘family’ may be taken to mean not only a wife and children but every near relative.”2’ In December 1950, at the recommendation of a Senior Whitley Council (a government- sponsored arbitrator), Nigerian senior officers of the civil service, including railway officials, became eligible for children’s allowances comparable to those paid to expatriates.24 Having conceded parity with European officials, administrators now opposed the extension of allowances to junior level employees on economic grounds. In 1953, the head of Medical Services wrote, “With polygamy and large families, the cost of introducing a [universal] scheme of family allowances in this country would be prohibitive.”25 Still, through the late 1940s and into the ‘50s, union demands and directives from Whitehall pushed the colonial government toward greater emphasis on male workers as family providers. In 1953 the Secretary of State for the Colonies conducted an inquiry into the extent to which a family wage system prevailed in Africa. Nigeria’s 21 Davies, W. Tudor: Enquiry into the Cost of Living and the Control of the Cost of Living in the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria Colonial Office No. 204. London 1946, p. 48. For background on the call for family allowances, general strike, and Tudor Davies Commission, see A nan aba, Wogu: The Trade Union Movement in Nigeria. New York 1970; Cohen, Robin: Labour and Politics in Nigeria, 1945-71. London 1974; and Lindsay, Lisa A.: Domesticity and Difference: Male Breadwinners, Working Women and Questions of Gender in the 1945 Nigerian General Strike. In: American Historical Review 104 (1999), p. 783-812. 22 Minutes and c o r re s p o n d e n c e . In: CSO 26/46820/S. 1 (Nigerian National Archives, Ibadan). 2’ Harrigan, Walter: Report of the Commission on the Civil Services of British West Africa, 1945-46. Accra 1946, p. 8. 24 General Manager's Staff Circular No. 11/50 (6 December 1950). In: GMS 335 vol. 1, “General Manager’s Circulars" (NRC Lagos). 25 Minute from S. L. A. Manuwa, Inspector-General of Medical Services, to Secretary of State, 20 July 1953, Public Record Office, UK (hereafter PRO), CO 888/10. 240
