Unveiling perceived gender bias in Middle Eastern academia: cross-country analysis of women’s leadership

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.