Christina H. Gladwin

Impacts of Structural Adjustment Programs on African Women Farmers and Female-Headed Households

The structural adjustment programs (SAPs) initiated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and supported by donors are stimulating many tropical African economies through an infusion of foreign exchange, increased agricultural prices, devaluation of overvalued currencies, improved marketing policies, trade liberalization, and increased competition from the private sector. Recently, however, debates about the pros and cons of SAPs have ensued.

Is a Turnaround in Africa Possible without Helping African Women to Farm

A turnaround in Africa is not possible in the short run of at least 1 decade without helping women farmers with hand-hoes gain equal access to basic agricultural inputs and resources. This is so because women are such active participants in farming. It is estimated that for 82 countries women constitute 46% of the agricultural labor force in sub-Saharan Africa and 31% of the force in North Africa and the Middle East. In the long run however a turnaround is possible without helping women to farm because women farmers will be displaced as agricultural intensification occurs. But because the intensification process will be extremely uneven both within and between African countries the displacement of women farmers will also be uneven. Thus their displacement will be blocked or slowed down in regions with sufficient land resources and land-extensive family systems extensive male out-migration lack of control of animal diseases or the presence of gender-neutral incentives to produce. In conclusion women farmers in these regions will still be the norm while those in other regions will be displaced as intensification required by a turnaround proceeds. To insure that women farmers are not displaced policy planners at international national and local levels should communicate with technical experts and extension specialists about the need to incorporate women as agricultural producers with full access to yield-increasing inputs in development projects.

Defacto client-treatment matching: how clinicians make referrals to outpatient treatments for substance use

Despite the fact that there is no clear consensus from clinical trials on client-treatment matching guidelines for substance use problems, qualitative research with clinicians has begun to identify the factors that influence treatment placement decisions. The purpose of the present study was to use ethnographic decision tree modeling to describe and predict decisions to refer clients to either a brief or a longer substance use program. Eleven clinicians who complete intakes at an addiction treatment agency engaged in two semi-structured interviews regarding actual referral decisions; one interview was to develop a decision tree model and the other was to test the accuracy of the model. The setting for the referrals was an addiction treatment facility with both a brief and a longer outpatient program. Results showed that the decision tree was accurate in predicting 85% of new referral decisions. The decision tree indicated that clinicians tended to use the longer outpatient treatment as the default, with a series of constraints being put on referral to the briefer treatment program. The decision tree also suggested that there are a number of contextual factors that arise in decisions that present a challenge for simple implementation strategies of general clinical guidelines in substance use treatment.

Microdynamics of Contraction Decisions: A Cognitive Approach to Structural Change

The farm problem ... is primarily a problem of economic growth. The demand for farm products grows more slowly than the demand for nonfarm products; consequently economic growth requires a steady shift of labor and other resources from agriculture to other sectors. Since there is resistance to this shift, there are usually too many people in farming and as a result per capita farm income is depressed. -Houthakker, page 5