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
reply indicated that family obligations were taken into consideration in calculating men’s wages.“ At least some recognition of family obligations appeared in the Gorsuch commission report on civil servants, as its calculations for necessary wage levels were based on the “assumption that the recipient has more than one mouth to feed [,..]”26 27 Still, Gorsuch did not explicitly recommend family allowances for junior officials, and by 1957 at least some unions continued to include them in their demands.2* Money, Marriage and Masculinity on the Colonial Nigerian Railway It was somewhat ironic that British administrators in Nigeria resisted the idea of African male workers as breadwinners. Missionaries had for decades stressed the ideal of monogamous families based on male economic and moral authority. Formal education, including vocational instruction, was targeted primarily at men and boys, as officials discounted the potential contributions of women to household and national economies.M And within the Nigerian Railway, personnel policies were often based on the assumption that social reproduction was the responsibility of workers’ wives, who were engaged primarily in domestic tasks.“ But in spite of this background, as well as the development of a male breadwinner norm and generalized “family wages’’ in Britain,-" administrators were not willing to extend such principles automatically to Nigerians. And although most wives of Nigerian workers were employed outside the home, union officials agitated for wages that recognized men as household providers. The most obvious explanation for these developments is economic. When administrators wanted to keep wages low, they pointed to women’s trade as an excuse for not paying men a 26 H. J. Marshall, Acting Governor General of Nigeria to Secretary of State Oliver Lyttelton, 15 April 1955, PRO, CO 859/810. 27 Gorsuch, L. H.: Report of the Commission on the Public Services of the Governments in the Federation of Nigeria, 1954-55. Lagos 1955. 2* See “List of Allowances” n. d. [November 1957] in GML 302/2 vol. 1 (NRC Lagos), which includes children’s allowances for senior officials only. Rapson Recommendations: Rail Workers to Lead Delegation to Government. In: Daily Service [Lagos] (5 August 1957) mentions a protest advocating children’s allowances for junior officers. Interestingly, by 1968 the railway workers’ union (NUR) opposed the payment of children’s allowances altogether, on the grounds that they only applied to senior servants and they were unnecessary in the context of high salaries and other perquisites. NUR Demands Abolition of Allowances. In: Morning Post [Lagos] (2 April 1968). 2'7 See Denzer, LaRay: Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study. In: International Journal of African Historical Studies 27 (1994), p. 1-39. w Lindsay , No Need. " Pedersen, Susan: Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945. Cambridge 1993; R o s e, Sonya O.: Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth- Century England. Berkeley 1992. 241
