Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in measuring gender and women’s empowerment in Egypt

Abstract

This paper aims to measure Gender and Women’s empowerment in Egypt. Based on Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey of 2012 (ELMPS, 2012), where a total of 6920 married women between the ages of 19 to 49 years old were selected. Findings from the Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed that five factors were extracted and explained 68.028% of the cumulative variance. Making decisions had the greatest effect on empowering Egyptian women, whereas seeking help from relatives had the least effect Then, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test the hypothesis which revealed that there were relationships between the variables and their latent constructs. Also, a MannWhitney test used to measure the women’s empowerment for all the 17 variables that were all statistically significant. Finally, some demographic variables were analyzed with regards to the women’s empowerment and revealed that both older and more advantages women were more empowered than younger ones, whereas education seemed to have no effect in empowering Egyptian women.