Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria. By Lisa A. Lindsay. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2003. Social History of Africa. Pp. xvi, 241; 15 illustrations. $63.95 cloth, $23.95 paper. The introduction of large-scale capitalist institutions during the colonial period in sub-Saharan Africa and the attendant proliferation of wage labor occupations had powerful effects on the social fabric of people's lives. In Working with Gender Lisa Lindsay considers the cultural shifts experienced by some of the earliest wage-earning men and their families in southwestern Nigeria. Her book can be placed within a larger genre of economic studies -such as those of Phyllis Martin, writing about colonial Brazzaville, and Keletso Atkins, about nineteenth-century Natal-that are valued for their insights into the adjustments individuals faced when unfamiliar disciplines were imposed on them in newly introduced places of work.1 Lindsay explores another dimension of this transition. Her concern is with the way wage labor influenced ideas of gender and domesticity, with stress on the masculine side of the equation. Lindsay relies primarily on railway workers to tell her story. Nigeria's rail system was established in 1896 when the British began to prepare land and lay track. It was a speedy process. By 1901 there were 10,000 workers, and by 1960 the number tripled, so that railway employees constituted some 5 percent of all Nigerian wage earners. Much of the country's urban development and vitality during this sixty-year period were linked to the railways. Cities were transportation hubs and workers flocked to them because of their promise for wage employment in railways and ancillary establishments, even though by 1950 Nigeria had the lowest ratio of wage-employed workers among Africa's colonies. Thanks to their critical mass and their significance in the colonial economy, railway workers were able to take a lead role in shaping the country's wage labor practices and union affairs. If nothing else, their ability to close down the nation's key transportation artery gave them a special advantage in mobilizing dissent. During their heyday, railway workers were relatively secure, well paid, and strong in their collective actions. Lindsay looks at their rise from earliest days, through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, to a general strike for higher wages in 1945, in which they played a prominent role in bringing about unity among urban wage earners, and finally to another general strike in 1964 when the issues revolved around enormously unequal pay scales (within single institutions) and discontent with national government leadership. She uses the two strikes to highlight her main concern: that gender, as it pertained to domestic relationships, was a central ingredient in the discourse used to justify workers' demands. The discourse used to legitimate workers' needs was contradicted by the realities of their lives. In one of the more intriguing aspects of the book, Lindsay charts the rise of the male breadwinner. This was a European-imposed ideology, and one that was enthusiastically embraced for instrumental purposes since the idea of a sole wage earner could be used to justify wage increases. …

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