Document Type
Article
Source of Publication
Cogent Education
Publication Date
1-30-2026
Abstract
Gender bias remains a significant systemic barrier for women in academic leadership, restricting both career advancement and influence that creates a leadership gap, accenting the need for evidence-based strategies to promote equity and inclusive leadership pathways. Guided by social role theory, which explains in what way incongruence between communal female roles and agentic leadership roles leads to prejudice against women leaders, we investigated their perceptions of gender bias across four countries each with different local sociocultural gender norms, religious interpretations and national policies: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Pakistan. Employing a cross-national comparative and descriptive research design, 2025 data were collected from N = 250 respondents using the Gender Bias Scale (Cronbach’s alpha =.91). A regression analysis revealed that all four hypotheses were supported: country of residence; type of institution (public or private); leadership designation (executive, academic or departmental); and leadership experience were statistically significant in predicting women leaders’ perceptions of gender bias toward women in academic leadership. Results highlight the crucial need for culturally responsive (context-specific) institutional reforms and inclusive leadership practices to dismantle systemic barriers and promote equitable advancement opportunities for women in academia across these regions.
DOI Link
ISSN
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
13
Issue
1
Disciplines
Business | Education
Keywords
academic women leadership, Gender bias, higher education, Middle Eastern countries, social role theory
Scopus ID
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Mohebi, Laila; Alghamdi, Amani K.Hamdan; and Shaukat, Sadia, "Unveiling perceived gender bias in Middle Eastern academia: cross-country analysis of women’s leadership" (2026). All Works. 7864.
https://zuscholars.zu.ac.ae/works/7864
Indexed in Scopus
yes
Open Access
yes
Open Access Type
Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series