Ever-single, older women are a diverse group, whose experiences of singlehood have received little attention from researchers. In this qualitative study, eight women, between the ages of 65 and 77 living in a mid-sized Southwestern Ontario city, were interviewed about being ever-single during the latter half of the 20th century, including their perspectives of the benefits and drawbacks of this status during this time period. Data were collected in semi-structured interviews and the constant comparative method was used for data analysis. Emergent themes illustrated how the women's stories of singlehood were affected by the sociopolitical contexts of their youth, which thereby influenced the women's desire and opportunities to get married. They also discussed how singlehood had influenced their financial, educational, housing, and social support resources. Upon reflection, the women articulated the benefits of lifelong singlehood, strongly emphasizing their independence and "ability to be alone", which was viewed as very important as they aged. The drawbacks of singlehood focused on loneliness and the absence of a social support network, which took on particular importance as the women experienced increasing age and disability. Overall, the participants expressed satisfaction with their marital status and defied common stereotypes about older, single, women. Implications of these findings relate to the social structure of marital status and its impact upon the lives of women who remain single.

Young single working women moving to Toronto in the early 1900's, found the housing situation dire, and in response, charitable agencies built residences for these young women. Typically these agencies oversaw the 'moral well-being' of their residents through the imposition of curfews and restrictive conditions. In 1916, H. Henry Fudger, President of Simpson's Department Store provided the Sherbourne House Club. Based on the principal of self?governance, the rules were made and maintained by the residents. This paper looks at the unique experience of the Sherbourne House Club as described in scrapbooks kept by Florence Bollert, from 1916 though the end of WWII.

While a large number of the residents were employees of Simpson's, the other residents found employment in a broad range of occupations, and included writers, musicians, social workers. The professional lives of these single women were reflected in the activities undertaken within the public rooms of the Club. Music recitals, theatrical productions were held as part of the prodigious money making programs which funded the social welfare and health care programs for young women that were club projects. Educational programs, dance and card parties rounded out the house life.

If the aspiring middle class young women of Sherbourne House Club were more likely to view the world from the protected comfort of the sunroom than the from exposed front porch of factory working class single women, it was a sunroom with large open windows and a clear view of the world passing by, not just on the street but through the doors of the club. It was home in Toronto for unattached women, back from Mission work in Japan or working with travelling theatre companies. The story of the women residents is a window into the life of independent single women in Toronto; the precarious nature of good health and employment, the pleasures in friendships and city life.

The Club's membership was open to all women in Toronto regardless of their residence. Perhaps because of this more expansive membership, but more likely because of its founding principles and the women who guided the residential aspects of the club, the residence was both a home and a site of empowerment for the single women who lived there.

How the profession of 'missionary' was defined underwent a profound change over the course of the nineteenth century. The movement became increasingly professional both in terms of providing a unique service for the western community, and by creating exclusive qualifications for joining the guild.[1] The presence of wives and daughters in the mission field, the first women to join the mission project, initially reinforced traditional male spheres of professional responsibility. However, by the 1890s single women workers made up a significant portion of British Protestant Mission Societies' workforce. Their presence challenged traditional gendered definitions of what constituted 'professional' work in several ways. Men received education and training which became gradually more specialized throughout this period. For both men and women, missions paralleled wider secular professional society in the way in which educational requirements gradually replaced social markers as a way of differentiating between those deemed qualified and those unqualified for mission life.[2] However, an assessment of whether or not a female candidate could be considered 'ladylike' remained a part of the selection process of most missions until well into the twentieth century. Thus, single professional women offered a real challenge to mission boards. In the hiring stage, they were expected to meet the 'ideal' concept of a middle class 'lady'; yet that very ideal was dependant upon being marries. This was even more true 'in the field' where the status of being unmarried defied the both accepted model of Christian wife and mother, and further, the established mission tradition of hiring women connected to the society through familial relations, and who would soon marry into the wider mission family. In many cases these single professionals in fact carried on the work begun by the wives of missionaries. However, the unmarried status of these female workers, their ability to work longer hours and live and work independently of a spouse or male co-workers, resulted in the formation of a [unique/gendered] professional identity.

This paper analyzes the hiring and employment practices of three British Protestant Missions: the London Missionary Society, the China Inland Mission and the mission work of the Scottish Presbyterian Churches. Each of these missions received benefit from the growing number of newly professional single women who chose careers in missions in the modern period. However, these women's developing professional identity required that they carefully negotiate between what was constituted professional activity, and personal choice. For respectable Christian women in the long nineteenth century, marital status played a key role in shaping their experience as British missionaries, and in defining their profession.

An examination of women's employment experiences during the 1930s raises some fascinating historical questions about gender boundaries: What was it like to be an employed woman during a period of high male unemployment? What impact did the traditional association between breadwinning and masculinity have on women's experiences of wage-earning? How did prevailing white middle-class Anglo norms define women's employment options?

As the scholarship of Margaret Hobbs has shown the male breadwinning ideal exerted pressure on employed women during the 1930s. Exclamations like "Go Home Young Women!" demanded that women had no right to employment when men were unemployed. Despite this concern all women were not targeted equally. Indeed, the boundaries of gender shifted to include and exclude employed women depending on such factors as marital status, race/ethnicity, age and class.

Using oral history methodology and the tools of social and cultural history, this paper asserts that wage-earning among single white females in 1930s Toronto was socially acceptable. In some instances, femininity was an asset for employment rather than a liability. It defined job options and provided single white women with access to jobs not available to married women, women of colour, recent immigrants, non-English speakers and unemployed white males.

By the 1930s, gender boundaries had shifted to encourage wage-earning among certain groups of women. Despite these shifts, the Ontario government, business managers and the community continued to patrol the boundaries of women's employment: they created regulations, formed company policies, wrote editorials and exerted social pressure on those who didn't conform. In doing so they maintained the façade of the male breadwinner ideal.

The nearly universally prescribed, and adopted, role for women of any class, race, or ethnicity in Western nations through the nineteenth century to the second World War was heterosexual marriage, coupled with full-time domestic labour. To move across the boundary from single to married meant the confirmation of the central social identity of women in Western society. Yet many women never made that transition to the married state, through choice or circumstance. Although the term 'single' can imply solitude and isolation, in fact many single women reveal lives of complex relationships, vocations, and community ties. Allowing single women's voice to be heard about what they thought of their state and what opportunities and barriers they reveal about living single is an essential part of understanding their history.

The experience of singleness could create a distinct identity that is different from that of a married woman. The single woman was compelled by her marital status to frame her identity not in terms of husband and children, but in employment, service, and relationships outside the conjugal home. From a close examination of the unpublished autobiography of Margaret W. Bayne (1865-1946), we can see multiple identities that embrace both traditionally-prescribed arenas for women's interests (family, relationships) and those often preserved for men: politics, intellectual attainment, and ambition. This paper is concerned with demonstrating these multiple strands of Margaret Bayne's life. As a teacher, and administrator for the Industrial Home for Girls in Vancouver, Bayne's career seems to have been typical of middle-class educated single women. As a homesteader, land speculator, and political activist, we discover that her life was both emblematic and unique.

Her autobiographical narrative challenges us to see her identity not only as a 'woman,' with all that early 20th century ideology implied, but as a self-directed, independent person. Her work helps reframe the divide of 'woman/man' that we commonly adopt, into a potentially more revolutionary model: 'woman/individual.' At the same time that she is weaving a narrative of relationships, mutual help and connection, she is firmly placing herself within the noteworthy public events and personages of her day. A pioneer in both the literal and political sense, Bayne weaves a many-layered narrative that allows us to the see her not only as a 'single woman', but as an individual and a citizen as well.

From Frederick Jackson Turner forward, historians of the United States have emphasized the significant role played by homesteaders in settling the west. Following the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, thousands of families took up the challenge of migrating in return for free land. While some families did find a new stake in life, many soon found isolation, idleness, and economic hardship to be more than they could stand and retreated east in defeat.

This vast migration coincided with the increasing visibility of women in American society. Women who did not marry or lost their husband were no longer necessarily confined to the domestic world; many chose careers or roles in reform rather than waiting quietly at home for a (new) husband. This phenomenon led me to wonder: how did marital status affect who chose to move west to take advantage of the Homestead Act? Did single women respond to the opportunity, and why or why not? If they did, how did their marital status affect how they understood and experienced life "holding down a claim"? Did they encounter the same hardships as men, or did gender shape their experience differently?

The historiography on the American West has a long and venerable tradition, but it has focused largely on the activities of white men. However, the last ten years have seen increasing interest in how women of all races and classes experienced the west. Historians such as John Mack Faragher and Lillian Schlissel have made substantial contributions to what we know about married women on the Overland Trail. Susan Armitage, Glenda Riley, and Elizabeth Jameson have all dealt with women living and working in both the 19th and the 20th century west.

The most valuable sources I have found are published accounts left behind by women who lived through this momentous period in world history. Fortunately many are now being published, but many more remain unpublished in archives and in family memories. I found that large numbers of single women did indeed choose to take up land under the Homestead and later acts. As expected, their marital status profoundly shaped that experience, from how shelter was built, to whether or not they held down another job while homesteading. Interestingly, however, these experiences were not all negative: in many cases I found women expressing both enthusiasm for the experience and tremendous pride in what they accomplished. I believe understanding how marital status affected the homesteading experience will help return women to their proper place as one half of the people tackling the challenges of the prairies and the plains of the American west.