Gendered Occupational Stress and Leadership Avoidance

This dataset supports a qualitative-quantitative mixed-methods study that explores stress, leadership avoidance, and coping strategies among female university teachers in Islamabad, Pakistan. The study investigates how institutional conditions, gendered expectations, and mentorship shape women’s academic leadership aspirations and stress management practices.

The dataset includes responses from 153 female faculty members across five public and private universities in Islamabad, aged 28–60, spanning academic ranks from lecturer to full professor. Responses were collected using a structured 17-question open-ended instrument informed by literature on gender, occupational stress, and leadership (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Morley, 2013; Rehman, 2020). The items cover domains such as primary stressors, leadership avoidance behavior, mentorship experience, institutional support, work-life balance, and emotional resilience.