Adelaide artist and data scientist, Miriam Hochwald invited us to the “Walk a Mile in My Boots” fundraising event for the Hutt Street Centre for the homeless. As we walked along we chatted about the different factors that lead to women’s homelessness.
I spoke to Miriam about my own brief experience of homelessness, soon after being forced out of my home to escape domestic violence. In my case, my background of privilege came into play. I had people in my life who stepped in to help me, but even then I remember how some relationships became strained because of my neediness. Sometimes I couldn’t face the humiliation of asking for a place to sleep; the insidious victim-blaming and harsh judgement that my requests provoked, so instead, I slept in my car. My employers at the time knew there was something seriously wrong, but I was too embarrassed to tell them the whole story. The small gestures they made to help me made a big difference. For example, they gave me outside-of-hours access and allowed me to use a company computer, the internet and printing facilities for my personal paperwork and social networking. I know my experience was pretty trivial compared to the people we walked for on Friday, but I’ll never forget those few dark, cold nights and the feeling of hunger and isolation.
As I walked along I wondered if structural violence in the workplace might be another major cause of homelessness – interpersonal structural violence in the form of psychological attacks, bullying and harassment; corporate structural violence in the form of intolerance of diversity, authoritarian silencing of dissent, the promotion of a culture of overwork and the disregard of obligations under WHS legislation.
How many of us would lose our jobs if we chose to speak up? How many of us would become homeless and how many of us could tap into our privilege to quickly find another job?
But the critical question for me is – how many of us, despite our privilege, choose to remain silent and therefore condone the spread of a toxic culture?
Cathy