Unveiling Gender Microaggressions in Schools: Developing and Validating a Scale for Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract

This study sought to develop a robust and valid scale to unveil instances of gender microaggressions experienced by women teachers in school environments. Collecting data from 440 women teachers employed in Turkish schools, the "Teachers’ Perceptions of Gender Microaggressions Scale" comprising 25 items distributed across five sub-dimensions. Upon exploratory factor analysis, the scale explained 50.14% of the total variance across its five factors. The identified subscales include "Weakness of Professional Authority," "Exposure to Abuse of Power," "Assumptions of Traditional Gender Roles," "Second-Class Citizen," and "Tendency to Masculine Behavior." The five-factor structure of the scale was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis and the participants' experiences were evaluated between "never" and "always". The fit index values (RMSEA, NFI, CFI, GFI, and AGFI) indicated that the model reached acceptable levels of fit. In conclusion, the "Teachers’ Perceptions of Gender Microaggressions Scale" is a validated instrument for assessing and quantifying the experiences of women teachers with gender microaggressions in the school context.

Keywords

• Gender microaggressions
• gender
• sexism
• microagression
• women
• teacher
• scale development

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