Understanding the Constructed Values of Divorced Women through a Laddering‐Based Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

 Malaysian Indian women’s divorce remains a highly stigmatized experience shaped by patriarchal norms, cultural expectations, and community surveillance, yet limited research has examined how women reconstruct identity and personal values following marital dissolu‐tion. This study employs a laddering‐based phenomenological approach grounded in Personal Construct Theory and Feminist Theory to explore hierarchical meaning‐making processes among twelve purposively selected participants. Data were collected through semi‐structured laddering interviews and analysed using thematic interpretation and hierarchical value mapping. The findings reveal a structured transformation from ex‐periences of oppression, humiliation, emotional deprivation, and economic vulnerability toward reconstructed values of freedom, self‐respect, security, and personal achievement. These transitions demonstrate that post divorce adaptation is not merely behavioural but cognitively and socially reconstructed within cultural constraints. The study contributes theoretically by integrating micro‐level cognitive restructuring with macro‐level gendered power relations, and practically by informing culturally sensitive empowerment and support interventions aligned with the United Nations sustainable development goal 5 and the United Nations sustainable development goal 10.