Breaking barriers to women's academic leadership in Indonesia: a Delphi study

Purpose Women remain underrepresented in senior academic leadership in Indonesia, yet evidence on the relative salience of the barriers shaping their advancement remains limited. This study identified and prioritized those barriers through a modified two-round Delphi process involving academic leaders and experts in Indonesian higher education. Design/methodology/approach In Round 1, 46 experts responded to an open-ended questionnaire, and researcher-led reflexive thematic analysis generated five barrier categories and 11 themes. In Round 2, 32 experts ranked the categories, producing a statistically significant but modest level of concordance (Kendall's W = 0.177, p < 0.001). Findings Family Responsibilities and Support received the highest relative priority, followed by Internal Psychological Barriers, Lack of Support from Colleagues and Leaders, Gender Norms and Cultural Expectations, and Structural and Workplace Cultural Barriers. These ranks represent the relative salience of categories in this expert panel and ranking task; they do not estimate causal influence or imply that the fifth-ranked structural barriers are less important. The findings are interpreted through role congruity theory and feminist institutionalism and are translated into recommendations at individual and leadership-development, organizational, and policy levels. Originality/value The study contributes a context-sensitive framework for examining women's academic leadership barriers in Indonesia and for comparing how these barriers are experienced across higher education systems in the Global South.