This study intends to explore the gendered moderating effects of supportive leadership on research motivation mediated by teaching workload and self-efficacy. The sample of study consisted of 204 randomly selected teachers of university of Sargodha. The participants were from different departments and working at different levels from lecturer to professor. A Likert type questionnaire was developed as research instruments to measure supportive leadership, research self-efficacy beliefs, teaching workload perceptions and research motivation. Expert consultation was sought about the instrument to check the validity to improve the instrument. Reliability of the instrument was established through Cronbach alpha coefficient which ranged from 0.79 to 0.91. Data was analyzed through SPSS Process Macro mediation model 4 and moderated mediation model 58 (Hayes, 2017). Result revealed positive correlation among supportive leadership, research motivation; research self-efficacy and teaching workload of university teachers. Teachers were working with less supportive leaders and moderate workload. Their belief about their self-efficacy was not very strong and were moderately motivated. The results indicated significant indirect effect of leadership support and research motivation through workload, which indicated partial mediation of workload as mediator. The results also showed insignificant indirect effect of supportive leadership and research motivation through self-efficacy which indicated full mediation of self-efficacy as mediator.  According to conditional effects there was less association between leadership support and workload of males relative to females. Workload was found to moderate the effect of leadership support and research motivation for females as opposed to males and the overall moderated mediation model was supported.  According to conditional effects there was a strong association between leadership support and self-efficacy for both males and females. Self-efficacy was found to mediate the effect of leadership support and research motivation for both females and males but the effect size was greater for females. It is submitted that heads need to improve their supportive leadership role for building a healthy research culture and for improving teachers’ research self-efficacy and increasing their confidence to be competent and motivated researchers.