Why psychological safety is failing women — and what HR can do about it

What if your psychological safety score is a lie? Not because the data is wrong, but because it's an average. And averages hide who is actually feeling safe, and who isn't.

When Karin Dahl, CHRO at Winningtemp, first saw the gender breakdown in our engagement data, her reaction was immediate: "Honestly? It hits me." And she is not alone in that reaction, because most HR leaders do not expect to find a gap. Instead, most organizations assume that if psychological safety is a priority, it applies equally to everyone.

But according to our research into what separates High-Performing organizations from the rest, women feel significantly less psychologically safe at work than men — consistently, across industries, tenure, and seniority levels. Across 876 organizations and more than 236,000 employees, psychological safety stands out as the category with the largest gender gap of everything we measure: 7.7%.

That number deserves to sit with you for a moment, because psychological safety is not a soft metric.

In this piece, Karin Dahl, CHRO at Winningtemp, shares her reaction to the data — and we walk through what it means, why the average score is hiding the problem, and five concrete things HR leaders can do about it.

What psychological safety actually means — and where the gap opens up

Psychological safety exists on a spectrum. At one end: asking a colleague for help, supporting each other, getting work done together. At the other: what Harvard professor Amy Edmondson defines as the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.

"Psychological safety is about whether people believe it is safe to show up fully, challenge what needs challenging, and be honest without fear of the consequences."

In practice, it determines who speaks up in a meeting and who stays quiet. Who challenges a bad decision and who lets it pass. Whose ideas make it into the room, and whose don't. Our research shows the simpler end of that spectrum is largely normalized. But women score significantly lower than men on both:

• "I feel safe taking risks in my team," and

• "I can bring up sensitive topics with my team."

This is not a background culture problem. It is active, ongoing, and measurable. And unlike most engagement dimensions, psychological safety is remarkably sticky — once the gap is established, it does not fade with time. It gets harder to close.

What the data demands — a conversation with our CHRO

If women are consistently feeling less safe, it is a signal that the culture is not equally safe for everyone. We sat down with Karin Dahl, CHRO at Winningtemp, to ask what this data means in practice.

"Honestly? It hits me. Of everything we measure, this is the widest gap between men and women — and it sits on something that really matters: whether people feel able to contribute, or end up holding back. When half your workforce feels less free to speak up, challenge, or put an idea forward, you lose a lot of good thinking... and you might be making the wrong decisions because of it," says Karin.

What makes the finding uncomfortable is where exactly the gap shows up — not in everyday collaboration, but in the harder moments.

"It's only in those harder moments that the gap appears. Even cultures that are genuinely good at collaboration need to put extra effort into making the environment equally safe for women. Speaking up has often carried a different cost for women than for men — and that cost shows up in the results," Karin stresses.

But here is the problem: most organizations will never notice. When men score substantially higher than women on psychological safety, the average sits comfortably in the middle and the gap disappears from view. This is how organizations can honestly report a solid psychological safety score and still have a culture where women are routinely less safe to speak their minds.

If you do not segment your data by gender, you are not measuring psychological safety. You are measuring the average of two different realities.

And for Karin, it is personal. As a woman, she recognizes the pattern — and she is direct about what the data demands:

"I can't look away from it. Seeing the gap this clearly makes it impossible to treat as someone else's problem. I don't have one clean explanation — is leadership still too male-dominated? Is it something in the culture we've built without noticing? What I do know is that it's every management team's responsibility to understand and work on."

Five things employers can do

Closing the gender gap in psychological safety is not a DEI initiative that sits alongside the engagement strategy. It is part of the engagement strategy. The organizations that build genuine psychological safety — for everyone, not on average — are the ones pulling away from the rest. Here is what you can do, according to Karin Dahl.

1. Look at your own data — this week

Karin's advice is simple: "Actually look at your own data — and not just the headline score. Break it down by gender, team by team, and see if the gap is there. Then take it to your leadership team and talk about it openly, instead of sitting on it." Do not wait for the annual review cycle. The gap may be larger than you expect, and knowing its size is the first step toward closing it.

2. Focus on the harder questions, not the easier ones

If your listening strategy measures psychological safety only through questions about peer support and general openness, you are missing where the gap actually sits. Track specifically whether employees feel safe taking risks and raising sensitive topics — and whether those scores differ by gender.

3. Pay attention to who gets heard in the room

Most of the gap does not show up in big moments. It shows up in the everyday meeting where the same few voices take all the space, and someone quietly decides it is not worth jumping in. As Karin puts it: "Don't let one person dominate. Actively make room for the quieter voices, and notice who you are not hearing from."

4. Lead by example — visibly

Psychological safety is built through repeated small signals from the people with the most power in the room. As Karin says: "If you want people to feel safe taking a risk, be the one who admits a mistake, invites pushback, and thanks the person who disagrees with you." This is trainable behavior — and it matters more for the women on the team, because they are watching closely to see whether the safety is real.

5. Measure over time, by gender

Winningtemp makes it easy to track whether the gender gap in psychological safety widens, holds, or closes as tenure grows. If it widens, something in your culture is actively eroding psychological safety for women over time. That is a solvable problem — but only if you can see it.

The compounding cost of getting this wrong

The data is clear: psychological safety has the largest gender gap of everything we measure — and it does not resolve itself. It compounds. The organizations that act now are not just closing a gap. They are building something that works in their favor over time.

High Performers score 12.9% higher on psychological safety than the rest. They get there by looking honestly at their data, segmenting by gender, and treating this as a leadership issue — not an HR side project.

Want to understand where your organization stands? Our report, Winning with Data, covers all six engagement dimensions across 876 organizations and 236,000 employees — with clear guidance on where to start.

→ Download the report

Winningtemp makes it easy to measure what actually matters, segment by gender, tenure and team, and act on what the data shows. Contact us today to find out how we can help your organization close the gap.