This dissertation studies the development of a regulation of prostitution in Stockholm during the period 1812-1880. The development of the regulation system is seen in the light of an analytical framework, developed from Carole Pateman's ideas on the sexual contract, and a feministic critique and elaboration of Jürgen Habermas's ideas on the public sphere. The regulation of prostitution was a common characteristic for many metropolises in Europe during the nineteenth century, where supposedly loose and lecherous women were medically and spatially controlled to impede the spread of venereal diseases. Stockholm, and Sweden as a whole, went from a non-gendered to a gendered control of venereal disease, which eventually developed into a spatial control of public women. This study argues that the practices of a regulation system was at first part of an attempt to import what was seen as part of modernisation. Rather than to prohibit extra-marital sexual relations, these were to be controlled and supervised. Eventually the system was adapted to local circumstances in Stockholm, and a control of women's sexuality in public became part of a metropolitan modernity. In the process of the professionalisation of groups such as the police and the physicians, public women were over time perceived as a group of professional prostitutes. The possibility to live off prostitution as a transitory stage in women's lives disappeared, and prostitution became a medically and spatially controlled trade.

Despite what the title suggests, Saskatchewan had a booming sex trade in its early years. The area attracted hundreds of women sex workers before Saskatchewan had even become a province in 1905. They were drawn to the area by the demands of bachelors who dominated Canada's prairie west. According to Saskatchewan's moral reformers, however, the sex trade was a hindrance to the province's Christian potential. They called for its abolishment and headed white slavery campaigns that characterized prostitution as a form of slavery. Their approach stood in contrast with law enforcement's stance on the trade. The police took a tolerant approach, allowing its operation as long as sex workers and their clients remained circumspect. Law enforcement's approach reflected their own propensity to use the services of sex workers as well as community attitudes toward the trade. Some communities were more welcoming of sex workers, while others demanded that police suppress the trade. Saskatchewan's newspapers also reflected differing attitudes toward the trade. While Regina's Leader purveyed a no tolerance view of the sex trade, Saskatoon's Phoenix and Star held more tolerant views. Saskatchewan's newspapers reveal that as the province's population increased and notions of moral reform gained popularity, police were challenged to take a less tolerant approach. However, reformers' efforts to end the sex trade dwindled with the onset of the First World War and attitudes toward sex workers shifted drastically as responsibility for venereal disease was placed largely on women who sold sex. Using government and police records, moral reform and public health documents, and media sources such as newspapers, as well as intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, this examination of Saskatchewan’s sex trade investigates the histories and social responses to the buying and selling of sex, revealing the complex and, at times, contradictory place of sex workers and the sex trade in Saskatchewan’s early history.

During the Progressive Era in the United States, social hygiene reformers underwent a fundamental change in their stance toward women accused of prostitution or promiscuous behavior. Rather than viewing such women as unfortunate victims of circumstance who were worthy of compassion, many Progressives deemed them as predatory villains who instead deserved incarceration, forced rehabilitation, and non-consenting medical interference. Texas, due to the many military bases within its borders, became a key battleground in this moral crusade against women as the carriers and proliferators of VD. "Promiscuous" women were seen as not only dangerous to the soldiers but also as a threat to the nation's security, creating an environment that led Texas Progressives to suppress women's civil liberties in the name of protecting soldiers. The catalyst for this change in attitude was World War I. The Great War brought to the forefront an unpleasant reality facing a significant percentage of America's fighting men: venereal disease. While combating sexually transmitted diseases was a serious medical and manpower concern for the military in the era before penicillin, the sole focus on women as the carriers and proliferators of VD led to a nationwide campaign against the "social evil" that demonized women and led to the suspension of thousands of women's habeas corpus rights. This dissertation examines how the twin crusades of Progressivism and the War to End All Wars created conditions in Texas that for many women meant appalling repression rather than progress toward the enjoyment of greater equality.