Systemic gender inequities in academia are sustained via the interpersonal practice of ‘everyday sexisms’: incidents, circumstances or situations where the sensation of (hetero)sexism (and accompanying racism, ableism, etc.) is present but could be explained away, minimised or misrecognised (Savigny, 2014). Everyday sexisms are a by-product of ‘lad culture’ (Jackson & Sundaram, 2020) and a causal factor in Australia’s ‘leaky pipeline’, where qualified, capable women and gender diverse scholars exit academia prior to reaching the professoriate (Strachan et al., 2016). When institutions communicate their commitment to gender equity through repeated discourse, institutional leaders – and male institutional leaders most of all – believe that their organisational culture supports this (Cortis et al., 2021). These attitudes matter, since academic leaders – disproportionally men in Australia (Hamilton et al., 2022) – set the agenda for if/how gender equity is addressed. Our survey research with N = 1257 academics (67% women) across 12 public Australian universities included original, intersectional vignettes of everyday sexisms, developed from academics’ verbatim accounts (see Gray et al., 2025). Vignettes were followed by six closed-ended original items investigating perceived frequency, plausibility and follow-up responses for the individual(s) involved and for the university more broadly. We focus here on the four included vignettes particularly relevant to women’s leadership and promotion trajectories in academia. Findings illustrated substantial discrepancies in how academics view instances of everyday sexisms. On average, women and gender diverse academics felt that the incident or situation detailed was more problematic, happened more frequently, felt more realistic to them, and should be addressed by the university as compared to their male academic colleagues. Despite viewing these incidents or situations as less problematic or realistic, men academics were significantly more likely to agree that (1) these would be taken seriously and that (2) they knew where to find policy/information about these types of incidents/situations at their university. Findings highlight an unintended consequence of Australian universities’ public-facing commitments to gender equity assuring institutional awareness of, and attention to-, barriers to women and gender diverse academics’ career progression and leadership. Responses from participating men academics point to them taking this messaging at face value. Our data supports the need for university leaders to attune to the prevalence of everyday sexisms amongst academics and to prioritise access to quality data detailing its manifestations and continued impact on women and gender diverse academics’ visibility, voice and access to institutional leadership.

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