Socio cultural Barriers to Empowerment of Female University Teachers: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Abstract

The study aimed to build an indigenous scale for measuring
sociocultural barriers impeding female academics' empowerment in public
universities in Punjab. For this objective, the researcher explored the
sociocultural factors impacting female teachers' empowerment status
while focusing on the personal, family, workplace, and public domains. A
5-point Likert scale questionnaire was prepared. After pretesting, 21 items
were retained for conducting an Exploratory Factor Analysis. A sample
was selected through simple random sampling from public universities in
Punjab, and data were collected from 224 female academics through
Online Survey. Using SPSS (version 25), EFA grouped items into four
factors: (a) workplace harassment, (b) coercion on personal decisions, (c)
domestic violence, and (d) negative public attitude. The cumulative scores
on these four factors were added to the Sociocultural Barriers scale. All
factors contributed to measuring the construct of sociocultural barriers as
there was a positive correlation between factors and total scale scores.
However, a weaker inter-factorial correlation indicated the mutual
independence of each component. Scale reliability was α= 0.83, and the
range of Alpha Coefficients for factors varied between 0.90-0.85.