ABSTRACT
This study develops and evaluates preliminary psychometric evidence for the Organizational Gender Backlash Scale (OGB-S), a candidate measure of gendered organizational practices through which women’s authority, competence, legitimacy, and access to strategic resources are challenged when they occupy or exercise leadership in masculine-coded domains. As exploratory nomological evidence, the study examines whether OGB is associated with leadership-related psychological and health strain and symbolic career self-limitation among women leaders. A non-probabilistic, purposive sample of 271 women holding formal or informal leadership positions in Peruvian organizations participated in the study. The OGB-S was evaluated as a theoretically specified set of organizational backlash indicators covering hostility/cognitive invalidation, sabotage/obstruction, exclusion, and gender stereotyping/role policing. The revised analytical strategy follows a preliminary validity-evidence sequence: ordinal CFA model comparisons for internal structure, reliability estimation, item-functioning analyses conditional on the supported structure, exploratory spatial and network mapping, and nomological associations with leadership-related strain and symbolic career self-limitation. The complementary analyses are interpreted as exploratory or nomological evidence, not as substitutes for CFA-based structural validation. Ordinal CFA did not support strict unidimensionality or a completed validation claim. None of the tested CFA specifications reached conventional close-fit thresholds because RMSEA remained elevated across models. The one-factor model for the 16 theoretically specified core items showed acceptable incremental fit but elevated absolute misfit (CFI = 0.957, TLI = 0.951, RMSEA = 0.119, SRMR = 0.061). A correlated four-factor model improved fit (CFI = 0.976, TLI = 0.970, RMSEA = 0.093, SRMR = 0.049), and a second-order model remained plausible but still short of close fit (CFI = 0.973, TLI = 0.967, RMSEA = 0.097, SRMR = 0.052). Reliability was high (alpha = 0.947; omega total = 0.964; Schmid–Leiman omega hierarchical = 0.842). These findings support preliminary coherence and relative multidimensional structure, not definitive construct validation or readiness for applied diagnostic use. In the two-stage PLS-PM exploratory nomological model, OGB was positively associated with leadership-related strain (beta = 0.597) and with symbolic career self-limitation through strain (indirect beta = 0.311), accounting for 35.7% of variance in strain and 55.0% in self-limitation. The study operationalizes Organizational Gender Backlash as role-contingent practices reported by women leaders themselves, extending backlash research beyond experimental penalties and proxy outcomes. It offers the OGB-S as an initial measurement framework for studying how women’s authority is challenged after they enter or exercise leadership roles. Consistent with the CFA evidence, the scale should be treated as a preliminary instrument requiring further item refinement, replication, and external validation.