Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960

Analyzing key examples of the sexual and familial regulation (through the law) of girls and women in twentieth-century Canada, this work explores the ways in which class, race, and gender shape the definition and punishment of criminality. It also examines the changing social and legal definitions of "normal" versus "criminal" sexual and family relationships, using case studies of incest, childhood sexual abuse, wife assault, prostitution, girls in conflict with the law, and Native women and the law.