During the turn of the 19th century, Toronto became part of the industrialization and urbanization phase. With that came the migration of single women to the city, women who left their small towns in order to find paid jobs in the city of Toronto. These were young single women who broke free from the unpaid working women of the past, although their freedom to work came with a price.
While these young working girls were trying to make into the world, many discouraged such notions of working in the city factories and shops due to the idea that these women would jepordize their shift into a housewife or motherhood. This idea was known as the girl problem, a delimma that needed to be dealt with because of the cross between exploiting women for cheap labor or creating women who would be healthy, respectable mothers someday. While these women worked to stay alive, they were given low wages, while men who worked were paid much higher. Their freedom as working women who spent their time working during the day and shopping and entertaining themselves was looked upon as suspicious.
Due to suspicions of women working, the police developed a way of monitoring what women did in the public sphere. Also an oganizaiton known as YWCA became over-seerers of women, they began to deecide wh was a retspectable women or who was a deviant in society. Many of these women just wanted to have the same freedoms that a single man might have, they face discrimintation in the workplace and were serverly underpaid and exploited. In order to survive many women had to turn to prostitution, thes result was that the very system that the men and the morally righteous social groups were worried about became the reality.

Gender as a discourse describes socially constructed characteristics of masculinity and femininity(lecture #2); women are socially constructed as mothers, wives, nurturers. In the book Toronto’s Girl Problems, women are seen as potential housewives and mothers. The idea of women working in the city rather than in the home became a fear due to “disruption of family cohesion, the decline of rural life, and growing militancy of the urban working class” (strange, 22). The idea that women who worked outside the home would only create problems for the well -being of society, this idea came from the social reforms and regulators who believed that women were moving away from what is presumed as “female” behaviour. These groups also believed that these young women who worked within society were seen as promiscuous and immoral. Strange describes them as “rebellious and women adrift” (pg.8). These young women were unwelcomed by the public sphere, their space which in is lecture is known as ones own physical reality (lec#2) is the home. The home has become a place that is socially constructed as a women’s space, a place as mentioned before where women can be mothers, wives, caregiver to the family.
Despite the socially constructed ideals of society, young women began to break free of what was expected of them. They came to the city to become part of the working world and remove themselves from the home, although some were still attached to the home in order to support the families they may have left behind (pg8). The city has become the space of a women, according to Strange, “they no longer appeared as women adrift but as creatures of the city, at home in its streets, shops, and factories”( 46). Women becoming part of the city and trying to establish themselves within space was sought as rebellious as previously mentioned. The working girl became an issue for reformers and police, “who appointed themselves as protectors of morality” (pg91). The idea of a women outside of the home and in the public space becomes an issue, this relates to women and their gender in space. Most of these reformers and police are men, who are believed to be the “protectors” implying that women are unable to take care of themselves. They believed that single women were “victims of potential economic and sexual exploitation and urban immorality” (1). Controlling women’s bodies in space as talked about in lecture is another form of power, “the body is the strategic target of systems of codification, supervision and constraints” (lec3). Men trying to control women in space, trying to bring them back to the home and domestic living. In lecture 3 women’s bodies are seen as a “fleshy temptation, threatening to engulf men and are a source of sexual temptation”. While reform organizations thought that there were certain evils within the city such as gambling, crime, intemperance (pg90) it was prostitution that was the “social evil” (90). The working women becomes the “temptress that led pure young men astray”(90). Reforms displayed the working women as unruly and unable to govern themselves, although this was untrue do to the fact that these women were treated unfairly within job system. These women had no choice but to fall into the trade of prostitution. Men not only tried to control women by keeping them in the domestic but also did not allow for jobs that would pay to sustain their living.