Hidden brain biases quietly stall women leaders in Ghana water sector

Deep inside hiring rooms, promotion committees, and project meetings across Ghana’s water, sanitation, and hygiene sector, a quiet cognitive machinery is at work. A new qualitative study published in SN Social Sciences by researchers at the University of Ghana and the University of Cape Coast reveals how two distinct types of gender bias, one fast and intuitive and one slow and deliberate, interact in ways that systematically stall women’s careers in water-related STEM fields. The findings, drawn from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 23 women leaders and professionals across research institutions and industry organizations, suggest that the barriers holding women back are not merely structural or cultural but cognitive, embedded in the very thought processes of the people and institutions around them.

The research team, led by Charlotte Wrigley-Asante of the Department of Geography and Resource Development at the University of Ghana, with Rita Boateng of the University of Cape Coast, Adelina Mensah of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies, and Cynthia Addoquaye Tagoe of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, grounded their analysis in Daniel Kahneman’s dual-process theory. This framework, popularized in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, distinguishes between System 1, the fast, automatic, and intuitive mode of thinking, and System 2, the slow, effortful, and deliberate mode. The researchers applied this cognitive lens to understand how implicit biases, operating through System 1, and explicit biases, reinforced through System 2, combine to shape leadership trajectories among women in Ghana’s WASH-STEM sector.

What the study uncovers is a recursive cognitive-institutional feedback loop that sustains gender inequality in leadership pathways. Implicit biases manifest as subtle doubts about women’s competence, fleeting judgments that surface in meetings, evaluations, and everyday interactions without conscious awareness. Explicit biases, by contrast, are more deeply reinforced by organizational practices and cultural expectations that normalize and reinforce the underlying cognitive assumptions. The two systems do not operate in isolation. Instead, they interact in a self-sustaining cycle where automatic intuitions about gender and competence become codified into institutional rules, which in turn validate and strengthen those very intuitions, making them harder to disrupt over time.

The technical precision of the study lies in how it maps this feedback loop onto real institutional settings. When a System 1 intuition, for example, a split-second assumption that a man is more suited to a technical leadership role, is never consciously examined, it passes into System 2 reasoning as an unchallenged premise. Deliberate decisions about promotions, project assignments, and leadership appointments then appear rational and evidence-based while quietly encoding the original bias. Over time, these decisions accumulate into organizational norms, cultural expectations, and deeply rooted practices that make the bias feel like common sense rather than prejudice. The result is a system where gender inequality reproduces itself not through overt discrimination alone but through the ordinary operation of human cognition inside institutions.

The researchers also brought an intersectional lens to their analysis, drawing on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational work on how multiple social identities overlap to shape experience. Their findings show that factors such as age, marital status, and caregiving responsibilities modulate both gender bias activation and institutional enactment. A younger unmarried woman may face different assumptions about her commitment and availability than an older married woman with children. Caregiving responsibilities, in particular, trigger distinct cognitive shortcuts about reliability and ambition that then feed into institutional decisions about who is ready for leadership. These intersectional dynamics mean that gender bias does not operate uniformly across all women but is activated and enacted differently depending on the full constellation of social identities each woman carries.

Women in the study did not simply absorb these biases passively. The researchers documented a range of individual coping strategies that enabled resilience, including psychological resilience itself, informal support networks among colleagues, strategic self-advocacy, and notably, the support of male allies. These strategies allowed women to navigate biased environments, maintain their professional trajectories, and in some cases advance into leadership roles despite the cognitive and institutional headwinds. However, the study is clear that these individual approaches, while valuable, do not dismantle the structural reproduction of inequality. They help women survive the system without changing the system itself, leaving the underlying feedback loop intact for the next generation of women entering the field.

One of the most striking findings concerns male allyship, which the researchers identify as a structural interruption mechanism capable of weakening bias reinforcement dynamics. Male allies, defined as men who use their influence and positions of power to support women’s advancement through mentoring, advocacy, or inclusion in decision-making, can disrupt the cognitive-institutional feedback loop in ways that individual coping strategies cannot. When men in positions of authority consciously examine their own System 1 intuitions and deliberately advocate for women’s inclusion, they interrupt the automatic transmission of bias into institutional practice. This finding suggests that engaging men as active participants in bias disruption, rather than as passive bystanders, may be one of the most powerful levers for change in male-dominated sectors.

The study’s implications extend well beyond Ghana’s borders. Women remain underrepresented in leadership roles within water-related STEM sectors across the Global South, and the cognitive mechanisms documented here likely operate in many contexts where similar cultural expectations and organizational practices prevail. The research connects to broader policy frameworks, including the African Union’s Agenda 2063 strategic framework for inclusive growth and sustainable development, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 6 on water and sanitation for all. Achieving these goals requires not only building more water infrastructure and more STEM education programmes but also dismantling the cognitive biases that prevent qualified women from leading the institutions responsible for those systems.

The methodological approach of the study is significant in itself. By using qualitative methods, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, the researchers were able to capture the lived experiences of women navigating these biases in real time, revealing nuances that quantitative surveys might miss. The study was funded by the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada, under award number 109795-001, and the authors gratefully acknowledge this support along with the participation of all staff who took part. The qualitative design allowed participants to describe in their own words how implicit doubts, explicit expectations, and institutional practices combined to shape their career progression, providing rich empirical texture for the theoretical framework.

Ultimately, this research adds a crucial cognitive dimension to scholarship on gender and leadership in STEM fields by linking internal mental processes to broader social dynamics. It suggests that interventions targeting only structural barriers, such as policy reforms or leadership development programmes, may fall short if they do not also address the cognitive foundations on which those structures rest. Unconscious bias training, for instance, has been widely deployed in scientific institutions, yet its effectiveness remains contested precisely because changing System 1 intuitions is far harder than changing System 2 policies. The Ghana study points toward a more integrated approach, one that combines individual awareness, institutional redesign, intersectional sensitivity, and the deliberate engagement of male allies to interrupt the feedback loop at multiple points simultaneously. As the researchers conclude, understanding how bias becomes institutionalized through cognitive mechanisms is an essential step toward weakening the unseen currents that continue to shape who leads in water, sanitation, hygiene, and STEM sectors worldwide.

Subject of Research: Unseen currents: cognitive gender biases and women’s career progression in Ghana’s WASH-STEM fields

Article Title: Unseen currents: cognitive gender biases and women’s career progression in Ghana’s WASH-STEM fields

Article References: Wrigley-Asante, C., Boateng, R., Mensah, A., & Tagoe, C. A. (2026). Unseen currents: cognitive gender biases and women’s career progression in Ghana’s WASH-STEM fields. SN Social Sciences, 6(11), 560. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01822-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01822-w

Keywords: Unseen, currents, cognitive, gender, biases, women, career, progression, Ghana, WASH-STEM, fields, scientific research