Purpose
Attaining equality between women and men and eliminating all forms of discrimination are fundamental human rights and United Nations values. Nevertheless, women globally suffer violations of their human rights throughout their lives. This necessitates investigation of the attitude that people hold towards women empowerment, which is defined as their ability to practice their rights, freedom and attain resources within a framework of gender inequality. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument to measure attitudes regarding women’s empowerment, which can develop better understanding and future interventions to counter these negative attitudes for better social and health care, including mental and physical health.
Design/methodology/approach
The factorial structure, reliability, content validity and impact of gender on factor structure of scale were examined among university students (N = 500) in study with male (n = 180) and female (n = 320) population.
Findings
Exploratory factor analysis using direct oblimin method based on principal component analysis indicated a three-factor, 16-item scale including subscales of personal freedom; equal rights and women empowerment-related fears. Instrument exhibited decent reliability (0.80) and content validity in both male and female university students with a t = −7.64, p = 0.00, suggesting a highly significant difference between the two genders on the developed scale.
Research limitations/implications
The major limitation was that the sample was obtained from student population; therefore, it will not be entirely correct to generalize it to the whole population of Pakistan. Similarly, there are issues regarding the availability of students because of a busy schedule or not having interest to take part in the study that led to variance in the sample. Lastly, the current scale is developed based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and it should be further enhanced using item response theory in future. Future studies need to include samples from different populations in Pakistan to bring out a more generalized view and try to minimize the variances in sample as much as possible for better results.
Practical implications
The scale is constructed using the basic features of women empowerment at its core and is applicable in various settings to measure the attitude towards women empowerment. It will be a helpful tool to be used in various health, employment and educational settings. Moreover, this instrument can be applied for research purpose of measuring attitude as a predictor in combination with other variables such as domestic violence and harassment.
Social implications
Empowering of women is one of the main agendas of 2019 of United Nations for Asian countries where women are not given equal rights, because of which suffer socially and economically from various problems along with issues regarding physical and mental health. By identifying the attitudes of general population, their causes for their attitudes can help in betterment of the women empowerment process.
Originality/value
This paper in discussion is an original work and has been performed with the purpose of assessing attitudes of males and females regarding women empowerment as the previous measures are either not psychometric valid or are in interview or survey form. The current developed scale is an attempt to develop an instrument that can be globally used.
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