UNDERSTANDING WOMEN’S SENSE OF POWERLESSNESS IN THE GENDER-UNEQUAL SOCIETAL LIFE: A MIXED METHOD SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Date

2025-9-2

Author

Antmen, Deniz

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The overarching aim of this dissertation was to conceptualize, measure, and experimentally examine women’s sense of powerlessness within the current sociopolitical context of Türkiye, where increasing authoritarianism has intensified gendered pressures on women. Study 1, a qualitative analysis of interviews with fourteen women, revealed seven themes that captured both the structural and everyday dynamics of powerlessness: sense of powerlessness, living in Türkiye makes women feel powerless, societal structure imposing the sense of powerlessness on women, familial life imposing the sense of powerlessness on women, women’s sense of powerlessness when out at night, sense of power, and struggle. These insights laid the groundwork for Study 2, which developed and validated the Women’s Sense of Powerlessness Scale across three phases: exploratory factor analysis and validation (Study 2a), confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2b), and test–retest reliability (Study 2c). The scale demonstrated strong psychometric properties, providing the first systematic tool to quantify women’s sense of powerlessness. Finally, Study 3 employed an experimental design to examine the effects of street illumination on women’s sense of powerlessness, showing that situational exposure to poorly lit environments heightened perceived powerlessness and related gendered emotions. Taken together, these studies advance a novel framework and provide empirical evidence for understanding women’s powerlessness in Türkiye, illustrating how it is shaped by sociopolitical conditions, lived experiences, and situational cues in public spaces.

Subject Keywords

women, powerlessness, sociopolitical, scale development, gendered space

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115555

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis