Revisiting the Women Workplace Culture Scale: Validation and Psychometric Properties of a Three-Factor Structure in an Iranian Study Sample.

Abstract

This paper describes the validation process of the Persian version of the Women Workplace Culture Scale and provides information about the perception of this culture in an Iranian working environment. A 30-item Persian version of the Women Workplace Culture (WWC) Questionnaire was administered to women working in public departments of the city of Bojnord, Iran (N = 200). As a result of a theory- and data-driven bottom-up empirical approach, a reduced 10-item three-dimensional scale was achieved entailing (I) perceived societal barriers for career development, (II) perceived organizational barriers, and (III) sexual harassment. This parsimonious solution showed satisfactory values of reliability, factorial validity and convergent-discriminant validity analysis based on correlations with the unidimensional 10-item Perceived Stress Scale and the 12-item Career Success Questionnaire. The scale can be used to measure women workplace culture in Iran and other Persian-speaking, Islamic-Arabic countries. It can also constitute a starting point for organizational diagnosis in projects aimed to enhance working women’s occupational health and societal participation.