Digital empowerment: developing and validating a tool to measure social empowerment among women
Binish Parveen, Nikhil Kumar Gouda, Showkat Ahmad Jan · Media Asia · 2026
This study develops and validates the Social Empowerment of Women through Social Media (SEWSM) scale to develop empirical and theoretical understanding of women’s empowerment in the digital space. Empowerment is defined as the development of agency, self-esteem, access to resources, and the sense of belonging and resilience. Although social media has been widely studied as a tool for women’s empowerment, a significant gap remains in the conceptualization and measurement of social empowerment as a multidimensional construct. To address this gap, the SEWSM scale was constructed and validated through a three-stage process comprising Instrument Development, Instrument Judgment, and Instrument Evaluation. A multistage cluster sampling technique was used to conduct empirical validation on 800 Muslim women in the Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh, India. The district is characterized by low female literacy, limited digital access and persistent gender inequalities. Structured questionnaires were administered in the field to collect data. The scale was developed using Exploratory Factor Analysis on a first subset of 400 respondents and validated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis on a second subset of 400 respondents. Exploratory analysis delineated four dimensions: social agency, social capital, informational assets, and social impact. Further evaluation examined indicator reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity using established criteria.