Measuring Collective Action Intention Toward Gender Equality Across Cultures

We introduce the gender equality collective action intention (GECAI) scale, and examine its psychometric isomorphism and measurement invariance, using data from university students from 60 countries across 13 world regions (N = 31,686). Collective action towards gender equality could be understood as intentional and conscious civic behaviors that are focused on social transformation, questioning power relations and the promotion of gender equality through collective efforts. Collective action is a powerful tool for social change and is
fundamental to women and girls’ empowerment on a societal level. Although, various instruments to measure collective action intentions have been developed to our knowledge none of the published measures were subject to invariance testing. Our findings indicate that scalar measurement invariance for the GECAI scale allows for comparison of the countries’ GECAI mean scores. Moreover, this metric psychometric isomorphism of the GECAI means that we can interpret scores at the country–level (i.e., as a group attribute) conceptually similar to individual attributes. Therefore, our findings provide an important addition to the growing body of literature on gender based collective action by introducing a
methodologically sound tool to measure collective action intentions towards gender equality across cultures which we hope can be adopted by future studies.