No Fixed Address by Susin Nielsen

 

 This book is addictive. Once you start it, you can’t put it down. Astrid and her thirteen-year-old son live in a van with their gerbil, Horatio, in Vancouver, Canada. They are homeless. Despite the drama of their experiences, Nielsen makes the story humorous and fun. This is a fast-paced read, but the depth of it is evident in the characters and the plot.

 This is the kind of book you want to finish because you desperately want to know what happens to the characters, who are quirky and interesting. Nielsen makes them jump off the page. I am convinced I've met them in person.

 Felix is Astrid’s son. “Felix” means lucky and successful. He is very smart and has an excellent memory. His best friends at school are Dylan and Winnie. Winnie is one of my favorite characters, and I love how their friendship unfolds. At the beginning it irked me to read that Dylan and Felix made fun of Winnie, but then they all became inseparable friends. Winnie is socially and environmentally conscious. She is empathetic and authentic. She ignores the bullying altogether and keeps working on her goals and motivations.

  No Fixed Address will keep you on tenterhooks till the end.

   The story is told from Felix’s point of view in the form of a diary. The narrative is compelling. As I read the novel the city of Vancouver became vivid in my mind. 

 The author did not give the characters a break. Every day is a challenge of unpredictable proportions. The hurdles that Felix and Astrid encounter make the reader seethe with anger, and, to make matters worse, Astrid keeps getting in trouble, so the story becomes even more riveting as you approach the end.

 No Fixed Address made me think about the intersection between homelessness and domestic violence. It also made me wonder about the vulnerability of homeless women and the violence they have to endure. I searched for reporting on these subjects but I found very little information. There was an article from a San Francisco journal about the violence that homeless women endure in the city of San Francisco, but it is not a free access article that I can share. I also found an article from The Guardian about the plight of women in UK who have to choose between being homeless or staying with an abuser because of the lack of social support in their system. I was astonished by the lack of reporting on this critical issue, but then I realized that the main media outlets are dominated by men. Furthermore, research has shown that 90 percent of both men and women globally are biased against women. It is probably easier to sell articles that vilify women than to bring the spotlight on issues of gender inequity and inequality.

  The end of No Fixed Address is satisfying and hopeful. My eyes were two water fountains... I daresay that it is a happy ending, because happy does not mean perfect. The story highlights the power of kindness, human connection and empathy.

 This book is classified as young adult fiction. I recommend it to teenagers and adults of all ages, and I hope the author will write a second book to let us know how these endearing characters are doing.

 

Links related to this post:

https://nursing.usc.edu/blog/how-to-help-homeless-women/

https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/community-belonging-student-success/care-concern/stanford-against-hate/fighting-sexism 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/30/record-number-of-domestic-abuse-victims-made-homeless

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/women-and-leadership-news-media-2023-evidence-12-markets

 

https://www.statista.com/chart/16881/women-in-news/

 https://hbr.org/2022/03/research-how-bias-against-women-persists-in-female-dominated-workplaces

The effects of prejudice in America

“Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.”~ Aldous Huxley.

A prejudice is a silent evil demon; its voice is reality.

A study published by Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues at Yale University provides some important facts that we should not ignore.

 In this study half the scientists were given the job application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the female applicants were rated significantly lower than the males in competence, how likely they were to be hired, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.

 The scientists also offered lower starting salaries to the “female” applicants: $26,507.94 compared to $ 30,238.10

  I also want to make clear that both male and female scientists were equally guilty of committing gender bias. (In other words, the gender bias has nothing to do with all the lies that we hear on a regular basis to justify the difference in salaries.)

 Four in ten American households with children under 18 include a mother who is the sole or primary earner for her family according to a Pew Research Center Analysis of Census and polling data. It has quadrupled since 1960.  Yet women in the US make an average of 0.77 cents to men’s $1.00 doing the same job.

  Women constitute over half of the United States population, but a woman has never been able to become president or vice-president. 

In 2013 women represented only 10% of all governors and held 18% of all US congressional seats.  

 Only 12 of the 100 largest cities have female mayors.
 Twenty-three states have never had a woman as a governor (California and New York are in this list).
 Do you think these figures reflect “equality”?

There is evidence of gender discrimination against female candidates. In 2008 an experiment was done where two congressional candidate credentials were presented to a sample of respondents: Republicans were more likely to say they would vote for a father with young children rather than a mother with young children. They were also more likely to vote for women without small children than with small children.  

   Not only do voters discriminate on the bias of gender, political parties do as well. When a sample of female state legislators was asked whether or not they believed that their political party encouraged women more, less or equally encouraged women and men, 44% of the sample responded that the party was more encouraging to men. Only 3% responded that the party encouraged women more than men.

  When I was preparing this post I came across the comment of a woman who had worked as an engineer in three countries: the United States of America, the UK and Norway. She said that she had endured sexism in the workplace in both US and UK, but not in Norway. She also shared this interesting article. As far as I know many women in Norway work part-time and the economy did not collapse.

 In Norway gender equality is taken so seriously that they recently passed a bill to make military service compulsory for women.This is not something I would recommend in the United States of America because  sexism is routine in American Military Academies according to the Pentagon. 

  A sexist culture is deeply ingrained there. Not surprisingly, Defense officials said that students at the academies see sexual assault and crude behaviors as an almost accepted part of their academy experience. Victims feel peer pressure not to report incidents.

  Sexism does not always happen on an unconscious level. It comes to the surface and speaks to us clearly when we hear remarks like the one made last year by Erick Erickson when he said that situations in which women are the breadwinners are “unnatural”. He also stated that the male is the one that has to dominate. 
   Sexism still exists, so why do so many people get mad when we talk about it? Why do they believe that we should ignore the matter and pretend that it does not exist?

 The US Constitution embraces equality and liberty, but reality has not caught up with it yet.