Experiences of gender-based violence in the academic workplace negatively impact the well-being and careers of researchers. Higher education leadership often downplays incidents as singular events to signal the situation is not a crisis. About two in three staff experience violent behaviour, e.g. sexual harassment or psychological abuse since starting the current employment in higher education. Women and marginalised groups are more likely to experience gender-based violence compared to men. Drawing upon the data of an international large-scale prevalence survey, we find higher prevalence rates of sexual harassment in universities with a high proportion of women in leadership teams and significantly lower rates of psychological violence in universities in which staff support gender essentialist views. Taking our empirical findings and the concept of crisis as points of departure, we discuss the effects of women’s numerical representation in leadership and the support for gender essentialist norms on the disclosure of gender-based violence.