Work social support (WSS) impacts women’s careers both in Western and non-Western contexts. In patriarchal societies, women's careers are more susceptible to the influence of WSS when compared to those in Western societies. Women in patriarchal societies are expected to perform multiple domestic roles as daughters, daughters-in-law, wives and mothers, necessitating support from their families and workplaces to effectively navigate these roles. In this research, we review 21 social support measures and identify the absence of a measure that entirely focuses on and accurately captures the work-related support that women receive from their non-work or private domain. To fill this gap in the social support literature, we propose a new WSS measure that is contextually separate from the available social support measures. Following established scale development guidelines, this new WSS measure has been developed and validated with three studies involving three independent sample groups from the patriarchal context of Bangladesh. In addition, we provide evidence of the psychometric properties of the newly developed measure across multiple studies. This new WSS measure is specific to women’s private domain and considers the societal aspects of a patriarchal context. Thus, the measure can be used to investigate the impact of WSS from private domain on women’s careers in a patriarchal context, beyond the Western contexts that have been historically explored in the literature.
