ONDCP issues first ‘treatment plan’: Not part of Strategy

Last week, in a surprise move, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) issued its first National Treatment Plan for Substance Use Disorder, along with its National Drug Control Strategy. If anyone was expecting an additional windfall like the $1 billion annual State Opioid Response grant program, it's not there.     

Local Labour Markets,Organizations and the Distribution of Family‐responsive Benefits in the USA

Family‐responsive benefits have important consequences for workers balancing work–family demands. Previous research on the distribution of family‐responsive benefits has focused on intra‐organizational determinants or general labour market characteristics, at the expense of local labour market factors. We address this deficiency by analysing a unique random sample of US work establishments nested in their local labour markets. Specifically, we ask whether, net of establishment and local labour market characteristics, women's local labour market standing influences the prevalence of family‐responsive benefits. The results indicate that women's labour market status, measured with a composite of occupational gender integration, aggregate educational attainment and percentage of women in managerial roles, has a strong positive net effect on the prevalence of family‐responsive workplace benefits. However, no significant interaction between women's status and establishment‐level characteristics was found. Our findings highlight the importance of local labour markets in the distribution of family‐responsive benefits across organizations.     

Linking an agency strategic review to increase knowledge management: San Francisco County Human Service Agency

Led by the agency director, the agency engaged in a Strategic Review, based on a comprehensive assessment of agency performance that identified strategies to improve organizational effectiveness through increased data-informed practice and knowledge management. The Strategic Review gathered information on staff perceptions, perceptions of external stakeholders, changing citywide and neighborhood demographics, policy mandates, and budget and workload issues. The need for the review was based upon multiple, substantial changes not addressed in the 2000 Strategic Plan, including the 2004 merger of the Department of Human Services and the Department of Aging and Adult Services, changes among the executive management team, transitions among key political entities, new policy mandates and changing budget allocations. This case study describes the Strategic Review process and content, summarizing key challenges and lessons related to addressing workload demands, fostering positive staff attitudes, balancing internal and external information needs, and integrating data use and planning processes across the agency.     

Guestworkers in Europe: A Resurrection?

Around 1974, most Western European countries abandoned migrant labor recruitment, and introduced restrictive entry rules. Today, policymakers are reexamining temporary migrant worker programs. This article examines demographic, economic, and social pressures for labor recruitment, discusses temporary migrant worker programs in Germany and the United Kingdom, and examines the European Commission's 2005 Policy Plan for Legal Migration. Current approaches differ significantly from the past and there is no question of a general return to labor recruitment policies. However, today's policies do share some common features with past guestworker programs, and may lead to negative social outcomes in both receiving and sending countries.     

Towards a Policy for Aging in India

Summary

India has been engaged in developing the National Policy for elderly for the last two decades. The efforts to establish a policy began building on traditional values, a small number of pre-independence enactments. Lawgivers of India spoke of the rights of the elderly and the responsibility of the state towards them almost 2000 years ago. Additional factors such as culture, social norms, and influence of international organizations, particularly the Vienna Plan of Action, have been responsible for shaping the Policy. The Plan of Action agreed upon at the end of the Vienna meeting could not come into being due to several reasons such as the size of the country and its federal structure. This article takes an overview of the efforts made by the federal government and the NGOs to create a National Policy. The article describes the process by which the National Policy came into being and provides an overview and critique of the present Policy. The author makes a summary of the major areas of action suggested by the Policy, the strategies designed, and the implementation roles of different Ministries. The author describes the steps taken since 1999 and provides the concluding remarks.     

Rural development and the Fifth Malaysia Plan

The Fifth Malaysia Plan, 1986–1990, represents the fourth phase of Malaysia's Outline Perspective Plan, 1971–1990. Its strategies for the rural sector incorporate broadly technocratic policies outlined in the 1984 National Agricultural Policy (NAP). Maximization of farm incomes, and of the national income derived from agriculture, is to be based on ‘efficiency of production involving the judicious selection of economically remunerative crops and employing the most efficient technology’. The model for the efficient mode of agricultural production is the estate or plantation. The greatest challenge to this ‘modernization’ policy lies in the padi sector. Much of Malaysia's padi land remains low in productivity and many farms are too small to support a family. Although great advances have been made in padi production since 1950, poverty amongst padi households remains high and, since the mid-1970s, there has been an active withdrawal from the industry by substantial numbers of farmers. The problem facing Malaysian planners in the padi sector is that of reconciling the continuation of existing land ownership and inheritance patterns with the need for the creation of larger operating units to permit the use of modern technology and raise the incomes of those working them. In general the technical advances of the last 30 years have widened the income gap between larger and smaller farmers. Weaknesses of the plantation mode of production in the padi sector relate both to its methods per se and their inability to cope with inadequate production by very small farms or shares. With or without major land reforms, which are not on the Fifth Plan's agenda, there is an urgent need to reduce the number of households dependent on padi growing for their living.     

Developments in National Policies for Food and Nutrition Security in Brazil

Brazil is on track to achieve many of the Millennium Development Goals, and this is widely credited to bold and innovative government policies backed by new forms of popular participation in social policy. This article examines evaluation evidence on two of the most important recent initiatives in Brazil's policies for food and nutrition security (conditional cash transfers through Bolsa Família and support for family agriculture through the Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos). It also considers advances in older policies (such as the School Meals programme) and the work of the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security, which has culminated in national legislation establishing food and nutrition security as a right.     

The extent and risk factors of child poverty in urban China — What can be done for realising the Chinese government goal of eradicating poverty before 2020

This paper examined the extent of child poverty in urban China, and how the structural and individual risk factors impact on child poverty in urban China using China Health and Nutrition Survey data. Child poverty is measured using a multidimensional deprivation approach. Eight dimensions that are indicative of children's basic rights as ratified in UNCRC (1989) are used to identify poor children, including nutrition, water, sanitation, health, education, information, participation and protection. The empirical results show that the hukou type of the family and parents' work units as the structural risk factors exerted the greatest influences on child poverty in urban China. These structural barriers for realising children's basic rights should be removed in order to achieve the Chinese government political goal of eradicating poverty in China in the next five years before 2020.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Trade Liberalization among Major World Trading Areas. By John Whalley. The Political Economy of International Money: In Search of a New Order. Edited by Loukas Tsoukalis. Agrarian Reform in Contemporary Developing Countries. Edited by Ajit Kumar Ghose. Livestock Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Constraints, Prospects, Policy. Edited by James Simpson and Phylo Evangelou. Energy, Environment and Development in Africa, SADCC Country Studies, Parts I and II. Edited by Phil O'Keefe and Barry Munslow. Continental Crisis: The Lagos Plan of Action and Africa's Future. Edited by David Fashole Luke and Timothy M. Shaw.     

Towards a policy for aging in India

India has been engaged in developing the National Policy for elderly for the last two decades. The efforts to establish a policy began building on traditional values, a small number of pre-independence enactments. Lawgivers of India spoke of the rights of the elderly and the responsibility of the state towards them almost 2000 years ago. Additional factors such as culture, social norms, and influence of international organizations, particularly the Vienna Plan of Action, have been responsible for shaping the Policy. The Plan of Action agreed upon at the end of the Vienna meeting could not come into being due to several reasons such as the size of the country and its federal structure. This article takes an overview of the efforts made by the federal government and the NGOs to create a National Policy. The article describes the process by which the National Policy came into being and provides an overview and critique of the present Policy. The author makes a summary of the major areas of action suggested by the Policy, the strategies designed, and the implementation roles of different Ministries. The author describes the steps taken since 1999 and provides the concluding remarks.     

The Effects of Gender and Relationship Context Cues on Responsive Sexual Desire in Exclusively and Predominantly Androphilic Women and Gynephilic Men

Sexual desire may be “responsive,” emerging from sexual arousal to sexually competent cues. Cues that elicit sexual arousal and desire differ, however, by gender and direction of sexual attractions. Further, relationship context cues are thought to be important for responsive desire, but this has not been tested directly. The current study examined gynephilic men’s (n = 27) and exclusively (n = 23) and predominantly (n = 17) androphilic women’s dyadic and solitary responsive sexual desire, as well as genital and self-reported arousal, to audio narratives varying by gender (male, female) of the sexual partner and relationship context (stranger, friend, long-term relationship). Consistent with previous literature, gynephilic men’s solitary and dyadic desire were gender-specific (greater to female than to male sexual partners). Exclusively androphilic women’s dyadic desire differentiated less to cues of gender than gynephilic men’s, and their solitary desire did not differentiate by gender cues at all, replicating previous research. Androphilic women with some gynephilia reported a gender-nonspecific pattern of dyadic and solitary desire (i.e., responsive desire to both male and female narratives). No effect of relationship context was found for any groups. Results suggest that responsive sexual desire may be more closely associated with self-reported than genital arousal patterns.     

Gender Ideology and Women's Labor Market Transitions Within Couples in the Netherlands

Objective

This study examines the role of women's and their partners' gender ideology in shaping women's labor market entries, exits, and changes in hours of employment.

Background

Recent research argues that women's gender ideology is crucial for understanding women's contemporary labor market participation. However, the role of male partners' gender ideology for partnered women's labor market participation has received less attention.

Method

The analysis uses three waves of a large‐scale household panel survey based on a random sample of individuals within Dutch households. Random‐effect models are applied to study whether women's and their partners' gender ideology are associated with women's labor market transitions and whether relevant household characteristics' associations with women's labor market transitions are conditional on both partners' gender ideology.

Results

Women's gender ideology is associated with the probability of women's labor market entries and exits, but not with changes in women's hours worked, whereas their male partners' ideology is related only to the probability of women's labor market exits. Furthermore, the negative association of having children with changes in women's hours worked is stronger for traditional compared to egalitarian women. There is no clear evidence that gender ideology moderates the association of the male partner's labor market resources with women's labor market transitions.

Conclusion

Women's labor market transitions are not only reactions to economic pressure and institutional constraints but also women's and marginally their partners' gender attitudes.     

The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

This article analyses the US response under former President George W. Bush to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic at the intersection of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, highlighting the various ways their distinct gender logics collide to reproduce masculine privilege and gender inequalities on a global scale. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the United States global HIV/AIDS policy and is the largest commitment made by any single nation for an international health project. My analysis is based on PEPFAR's ‘formal’ policy texts, including its authorizing legislation, five-year strategic framework and specific policy directives for recipient organizations. In addition, I examine more ‘informal’ texts like Congressional reports and Presidential speeches delivered by George W. Bush on various occasions. Drawing on a rich body of feminist ethnographic work in the fields of global governance, international political economy, organizational theory and sexuality and masculinity studies, the following article examines the various ways market-based norms and practices can legitimate the moral imperatives of neo-conservatism to promote ‘traditional’ values and institutions in the global South as leading solutions to global problems and insecurities.     

Reinvigorating resilience: violence against women,land rights,and the women's peace movement in Myanmar

In Myanmar, movements for gender justice strive to foster personal and collective security, vibrant livelihoods, and political engagement during a period of rapid and uncertain transition. This article draws from the experience of the Gender Equality Network (GEN), a coalition of over 100 organisations in Myanmar. It examines three cases in which GEN sought to document existing forms of resilience and expand these mechanisms through national-level advocacy. The first describes current attempts to publicise, and eventually eliminate, violence against women (VAW). VAW is a fundamental threat to personal safety, but also to the principle of societal accountability – that is, the extent to which society upholds the interests and rights of women and girls. The second focuses on women's (lack of) access to natural resources and economic decision-making, drawing on gender-focused input into the National Land Use Policy. Finally, we examine the impacts of conflict on women's resilience, and women's increasing participation in the peace process. In all three cases, effective mobilisation and networking not only increased female political voice, but also enabled creation of a more resilient democracy by modelling effective policy, research, advocacy, and communication strategies.     

Intrahousehold empowerment gaps in agriculture and children's well‐being in Bangladesh

This article examines the relationship between empowerment gaps between spouses and children's nutritional status and education using nationally representative data from the 2012 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. We measure relative empowerment of spouses using the recently developed Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index. We find that while gender gaps in empowerment are only linked weakly to children's nutritional status, fathers’ and mothers’ empowerment have different effects on investment in children. Fathers’ empowerment is positively associated with younger children's nutrition and schooling, while mothers’ empowerment is more important for girls’ education in general and in keeping older boys and girls in school.     

Toward A Renewed Sociological Jurisprudence: From Roscoe Pound to Herbert Blumer and Beyond

This article, based on the Distinguished Lecture presented on August 21, 2001, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Anaheim, California, proposes a synthesis of Herbert Blumer's macrosociological perspective on the race question with Roscoe Pound's philosophy and science of law (i.e., his so‐called sociological jurisprudence), Joseph Tussman's and Jacobus tenBroek's juridical methodology, and Philip Selznick's sociology of responsive law. The compound so produced will help to establish a foundation for a praxiological sociology of American constitutional law. The article focuses on the problem of legislative‐made “classifications” and their relations to the legitimate public purposes entailed in the enactment of statutes, laws, and decrees. Such classifications become problematic when they are said to be “underinclusive,” “over‐inclusive,” or both in seeking to effect their aims. Strategic research sites for this issue are racial and ethnic classifications that single out one or a limited cluster of racial or ethnic groups for special benefits (“affirmative action”) or restitution (“reparations”). Calling for a reinvigoration of Pound's pragmatic approach to sociological jurisprudence, I show how Blumer's analysis of the “color line”—when seen in relation to the original intent of the makers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth post‐Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, using Tussman's and tenBroek's showing of how such categorizations might be both methodically evaluated and applied to the challenged classifications—provides grounds for reconsidering whether the latter are instances of “reverse discrimination” and, hence, violations of the constitutional requirement of “equal protection of the law.” The science of law is a science of social engineering having to do with that part of the whole field which may be achieved by the ordering of human relations through the action of politically organized society. —Roscoe Pound, Justice According to Law We did not hold it necessary to wait for nature to put a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and we shall not much longer hold it necessary to wait for nature to dig the legal canals that will give security to neglected human interests which clamor for recognition and protection. —Roscoe Pound, “Juristic Problems of National Progress”     

Governing through accountability: Gendered moral selves and the (im)possibilities of resistance in the neoliberal university

Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethically accountable subject, this study examines the production of gendered moral subjects under neoliberal governance in contemporary academia. The analysis of 40 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with postdoc researchers and assistant, associate and full professors in a Belgian university reveals how in academics’ narratives of their ethical relations of (non‐)accountability towards multiple stakeholders, gendered subjects are performed along the heterosexual matrix reproducing the gender binary. The conjunction of gendered and ethical demands imposed through relations of accountability further opens up distinctively gendered possibilities of consent and resistance under neoliberal governance. We advance the extant literature on gender in academia which largely focuses on women's symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. By locating power in the gendered relations of accountability towards multiple others, it re‐conceptualizes gender as an ontological struggle in the constitution of the self as moral along gendered norms. The study rejoins recent scholarship that calls for the recognition and elaboration of a relational ethics by showing how such ethics enables the emergence of open and responsive subjectivities in relations of accountability.     

Surveying Issues That Arise in Women's Prisons: A Content Critique of Orange Is the New Black

The character Piper Chapman is presented in the Netflix original series, Orange Is the New Black (OITNB). Piper's story opens the door to the female correctional facility. With the mass incarceration of non‐violent, drug offending females comes the need for gender‐specific assessment, programming, and reentry efforts. It is the goal of this essay to briefly review several issues observed in OITNB (gender, victimization, sexuality, mental health/addiction, and race) and to raise awareness on additional issues related to women and crime. The essay will also provide a discussion on female relationships to include both outside loved ones as well as newfound friends within the facility and the accompanied policy implications. Research supports the idea that contact with prosocial loved ones reduces distress and recidivism. Policy implications suggest a need for more open visitation, assistance with welfare agencies, collaboration for reentry, and overall gender‐specific programming needs for female offenders.     

Training Policy Governance in Nonprofit Boards of Directors: The Views of Trainer‐Consultants

Although scholars widely discuss John Carver's (1990) Policy Governance model for nonprofit organizations, they have conducted little formal research on the implementation of the model. For this study, the researchers surveyed ninety‐two trainer‐consultants who graduated from Carver's Policy Governance Academy. The goal was to learn three things from their experiences: (1) whether trainer‐consultants maintain the model as a coherent whole or teach only parts of it; (2) what they perceive as the major challenges for nonprofit boards in implementing the Policy Governance model; and (3) what contextual factors, if any, they feel affect implementation of the model across nonprofit boards with different characteristics. Survey responses indicated that (1) consultants predominantly teach the model as a whole, (2) particular policy areas appear to be problematic for nonprofit boards of directors that implement the model, and (3) two contextual factors may negatively affect the ability of a board of directors to successfully implement Policy Governance boards larger than fifteen members, and organizations with no hierarchy, where the board also functions as staff. Overall, consultants' responses indicated that they feel Policy Governance is far superior to other models, but they recognize the problems and challenges that boards face in trying to implement it.     

Reprivatized Womanhood: Changes in Mainstream Media's Framing of Urban Women's Issues in China, 1995–2012

After waves of women's liberation movements, the reform era has witnessed a puzzling stagnation, if not decline, in women's status in China. Among the existing literature on the changing public gender discourse in postsocialist China, few studies have substantially engaged with feminist critiques of the “separate spheres” as an analytical framework. In this study the authors performed content analyses on 202 articles drawn from 3 Chinese mainstream magazines between 1995 and 2012 to describe changes in media's framing of urban women's issues. Over time, topics on marriage and private relationships became increasingly predominant, while concerns over gender discrimination diminished in the mainstream media. The results provide evidence for a revitalization of traditional gender values attributing women to “private” spheres and reveal the media's repeated use of individualistic approaches to structural problems, suggesting an alliance between patriarchal and neoliberal ideologies in shaping public gender discourse while concealing structural inequalities in urban China.