What Are the Psychosocial Risks for Women in Leadership?

Leadership already comes with pressure and for many women, that pressure is layered with additional expectations and risks that are less visible, but just as impactful.  

With modern workplaces changing fast, there are evolving employee expectations and a growing focus on managing psychosocial factors in the way work is designed, organised, and experienced which can harm people’s wellbeing. Australia is now setting the global standard for psychosocial compliance, with multiple states embedding psychosocial hazard management into law and holding organisations accountable for managing these risks. 

What Psychosocial Risks Actually Are 

Psychosocial risks come from the social and organisational environment of work. They’re not about individual resilience or personality; they’re about how work is structured.  

Common examples include: 

• High or unmanageable workloads 
• Poor role clarity 
• Aggressive or overly critical leadership styles 
• Bullying, harassment, or incivility 
• Lack of psychological safety 
• Poorly managed organisational change 
• Exclusionary or toxic cultures 

When these risks aren’t addressed, they can lead to stress, burnout, conflict, reduced performance, and even legal exposure for organisations. The World Health Organization recognises burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. 

Why Women Leaders Experience These Risks Differently 

These risks affect everyone, but research shows they often land differently for women, especially women in leadership roles. Understanding these dynamics isn’t just good practice; it’s a core part of organisational responsibility. 

Women in leadership often face unique stressors. McKinsey and LeanIn’s Women in the Workplace report suggests that women leaders report higher levels of burnout than men, while also taking on a disproportionate share of team wellbeing, inclusion, and people-related responsibilities. 

However, for women leaders, the impact is two-fold: they experience psychosocial hazards personally and carry responsibility for managing them within their teams. 

Some of the most common challenges include: 

Emotional load – Women leaders are more likely to be the person team members turn to for interpersonal issues, support, and conflict resolution, even when this sits outside their formal role. 

Credibility challenges – Women often face heightened scrutiny and may need to repeatedly justify decisions that would be more readily accepted from male peers, with research showing they are more likely to be evaluated against narrower leadership expectations and receive less clear, performance-based feedback. 

The competence–likability trade-off – Research highlighted in the Harvard Business Review shows that women are judged within a narrower band of acceptable leadership behaviour. Being direct can be perceived as difficult, while being collaborative can be perceived as lacking authority. 

Gender bias and discrimination – Their decisions may be questioned more often, or their authority undermined in subtle or not so subtle ways. 

Bullying and incivility – Women leaders are more likely to experience undermining behaviour, including exclusion, dismissiveness, or lack of support. 

Sexual harassment – A risk that remains disproportionately gendered, as highlighted by the International Labour Organization. 

Life stage health factors (including menopause) – For many women, leadership coincides with life stages that can affect sleep, concentration, and stress tolerance.  

This exposure increases the psychological load of leadership and can make the role more draining, isolating, or risky. 

The Legal and Organisational Duty to Act 

Across many jurisdictions, including Australia, psychosocial hazards are now treated with the same legal weight as physical hazards under Work Health and Safety frameworks. 

This means behaviours or practices that were once dismissed as “just part of the job” now carry real consequences. For organisations, this shift is both a compliance requirement and an opportunity to build healthier, more inclusive workplaces. 

How Organisations Can Reduce These Risks 

Supporting women leaders isn’t about asking them to be more resilient, it’s about designing workplaces that don’t create unnecessary harm. 

Practical steps that directly account for the different impacts on women include: 

• Strengthening psychological safety so leaders can raise concerns about team dynamics or behaviour without fear of being dismissed or labelled as overreacting 
• Incorporating gender-aware risk assessments into leadership and HR processes, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all approach 
• Providing structured support for leaders carrying higher emotional and relational load, not just performance expectations 
• Ensuring role clarity and realistic workloads to reduce chronic pressure and ambiguity 
• Actively identifying and addressing harmful behaviours such as bias, exclusion, or undermining, early and consistently 
• Reviewing how leadership behaviours are assessed to ensure bias is not influencing perceptions of performance or capability 

These actions benefit everyone, not just women, and contribute to stronger organisational culture and performance. 

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How Clearhead Can Help 

Understanding psychosocial risk is one thing; identifying where it is showing up across your organisation is another. 

For organisations looking to better understand these dynamics, tools like Clearhead’s Psychosocial Risk Pulse can provide a clearer picture of how employees are experiencing their work environment. Through short, regular check-ins, organisations can start to see patterns, identify emerging risks, and take more informed action. 

This kind of visibility can be particularly valuable for surfacing risks that are often less visible, including those experienced by women in leadership roles. 

If you’d like to learn more, you can explore further here or reach out to the team at sales@myclearhead.com to start your free trial. 

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1. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases  
2. https://hbr.org/2016/04/research-vague-feedback-is-holding-women-back  
3. https://hbr.org/2022/03/research-how-bias-against-women-persists-in-female-dominated-workplaces 
4. https://leanin.org/women-in-the-workplace  
5. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/women-in-the-workplace  
6. https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/content/women-at-work-global-outlook.html  
7. https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/new-ilo-data-confirm-women-face-higher-workplace-risks-generative-ai-men  
8. https://webapps.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/Stories/Employment/barriers-women.html#intro  
9. https://leanin.org/women-in-the-workplace/2018/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace  
10. Hopkins MM, O'Neil DA, Bilimoria D, Broadfoot A. Buried Treasure: Contradictions in the Perception and Reality of Women's Leadership. Front Psychol. 2021 May 26;12:684705. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.684705. PMID: 34122282; PMCID: PMC8187584.