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Jahanara RajkoomarJahanara is the Director of Customer Services at Gateway Housing Association with a track record of delivering strategic and innovative ...more
I have experience of the invisible barriers in the housing sector. They need to be smashed
The realisation that being seen as ‘different’ held back my career was a huge shock. Others in the same position should not let it defeat them, writes Jahanara Rajkoomar
For ambitious, driven individuals who are from a BAME background or have characteristics that make them ‘different’, it can be a huge shock to realise that those differences can be barriers to achieving your career goals.
The shock you can accumulate over years or that one moment when you can’t deny that no matter how hard-working or talented you are, your difference acts like a ‘glass maze’ that you keep bumping into when you think you know what turn you should take to get to your goal.
This realisation can act as a positive driver to break through those invisible barriers with sheer determination, and many of us who are different succeed in progressing through our chosen careers.
For others, defeat creeps in as the voice in your head that says “what’s the point?” gets stronger, so you consciously and unconsciously decide to just accept the covert discrimination and work to live.
I want to tell all of you thinking about applying for the Emerging Talent Programme or similar to not fall into the latter category.
“For others, defeat creeps in as the voice in your head that says ‘what’s the point?’ gets stronger, so you consciously and unconsciously decide to just accept the covert discrimination and work to live”
Programmes like this are not there because you lack skills to progress in your career, but to quieten the voice in your head that has grown in strength and has been fed by the overt and covert affirmations from those not affected by the same difference as you, that you are somehow not quite good enough to become a senior leader in the sector.
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I have been lucky in my career to be doing work that has been closely aligned to my passion to tackle the inequalities that affect so many people in our country. So this love of my work blinded me for many years to how I was held back from progressing, being rewarded in the same way as others who were not from a BAME background or a female.
The first time I realised this was a huge shock to me and I remember being sad and going home crying because the person who let my difference become an issue was a manager I hero-worshipped, someone who I thought recognised and valued how good I was.
But when I went to him to apply for a role that was a little bit more strategic, exposing me to work with important stakeholders, I was told that I was not quite ready for that type of a role and not to apply.
After the tears, my determination set in and I set out to prove to him that I was capable of that role and more. I got a better role within two months of that conversation. But, I am not going to tell you that I lived happily ever after from that point on.
“It was things like at appraisals, the bar that I was being measured by was that much higher than my ‘non-different’ colleagues and mistakes were held closer to the light to unpick and link to something that I could have or should have done better to avoid the mistake”
Over the next decade or so, I came across almost invisible manifestations of discrimination which slowed me down and held me back.
It was things like at appraisals, the bar that I was being measured by was that much higher than my ‘non-different’ colleagues and mistakes were held closer to the light to unpick and link to something that I could have or should have done better to avoid the mistake.
Or the worst is someone looking at you as if what you just said was gobbledygook, but when the same thing was said by someone white it was transformational for the organisation! I could go on and I am sure many of you who are ‘different’ will recognise some of this and have many examples you have experienced.
My message to all of you is not to keep your head down, instead recognise what is happening to you, the obvious and hidden transgressions. Stand up to it, call it out and show it out.
Schemes such as the Emerging Talent Programme will give you the confidence to use your voice and talent to aspire and achieve what you know already you are capable of.
Jahanara Rajkoomar, director of community investment, Metropolitan Thames Valley
The Emerging Talent Programme
The Emerging Talent Programme will reach out to under-represented groups to offer an inclusive entry point for a greater diversity of leadership talent into London’s housing and regeneration sectors.
The programme is being co-created by seven organisations across the social housing, development and urban regeneration sectors in London. The organisations are Network Homes, Peabody, Catalyst, Hill, Southern Housing, Sanctuary Group and supported by the Greater London Authority.
Future of London and Altair are currently looking for public and private-sector organisations to offer six to nine month placements to candidates on the programme from 2021. For more information please contact Nicola Mathers (nicola@futureoflondon.org.uk) or Fiona Underwood (fiona.underwood@altairltd.co.uk).
