Mission education and gender inequality in British colonial Africa

Colonial policies and missionary work had an impact on regional cultures in British colonial Africa. But to what extent did it escalate gender gaps?

The legacy that British colonial rule left on Africa is complex. Although it contributed to improved education and employment opportunities, recent studies have indicated that Christian mission education disproportionately favoured men over women. Long-run individual-level data on African women over the colonial era is particularly scarce.

In a new CAGE working paper ‘Gender Inequality and the Colonial Economy: Evidence from Anglican Marriage Registers in Urban British Africa’, CAGE Research Associates Felix Meier zu Selhausen and Jacob Weisdorf analyse Anglican marriage registers to investigate the scale of gender inequality in colonial Africa.

Using data from parish registers of over 30,000 couples from six major cities in British colonial Africa for the period 1860-1970, the research examines how colonial educational and occupational opportunities impacted gender inequality between the sampled Anglican couples.

The observed widening gender gap was not just a matter of access to education. Subjects taught in mission schools differed by gender. Christian Victorian values of domesticity (needlework, cooking, hygiene, etc.) were taught to girls, and boys were prioritised for reading, writing, and artisanal skills. This separation which facilitated men’s access to the formal colonial economy but prepared women for homemaking instead, is believed to have segregated African women not only in terms of education but also their access to the formal economy.

The findings show that gender gaps widened over the colonial era reaching their height during the mid-colonial period but began to narrow after the 1940s when the Africanisation and feminisation of the British public service allowed well educated African women to enter formal employment in education, health and administrative jobs.

Significantly the research demonstrates the difference in gender gap when comparing historical gender norms from West African and East African cities. Pre-colonial West African women had already experienced financial independence through informal income-generating work (such as informal market trading) and so resisted the missionary principles of wives as homemakers. In contrast British East African precolonial traditions of female domesticity aligned more with Christian Victorian patriarchal values.

Commenting on the findings Felix Meier zu Selhausen, Assistant Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University said:

“Mission schools played a crucial role in both widening and narrowing gender gaps in education among Anglican converts. Initially, they contributed to the segregation of women into domestic roles, but over time, they also provided pathways for women to increasingly enter formal employment.

“Our research shows both the detrimental and progressive impacts of colonial policies and missionary activities, reinforcing the importance of regional cultural contexts in shaping the experiences of Christian African men and women during the colonial period.”

• Read the full research paper: Gender Inequality and the Colonial Economy: Evidence from Anglican Marriage Registers in Urban British Africa

About the Authors

Felix Meier zu Selhausen is Assistant Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University

Jacob Weisdorf is Professor of Economic History at the Sapienza University of Rome