Nurain Janah: “We cannot visualise the path ahead”

In an isolated room, two women are about to abseil a wall: one can see where she needs to place her feet to strategise her way to the top. The other is looking bereft – in front of her, a flat slippery surface with no brightly coloured hand or footholds to grab onto to map out a seamless path ahead. The only difference between the two individuals – one of them is a woman of colour.

For women on boards and in leadership, talk of ‘the glass ceiling’ might be all too familiar. But for some women, the chances of looking through it to see what’s on the other side are limited, and research now shows that women of colour may face obstacles that other women don’t experience. 

So, what are the barriers for women to get to the next stage in their careers that others don’t or can’t see? 

Raised in New Zealand, Maldivian-born Nurain Janah is the founder of Authenticity Aotearoa which provides inclusion and diversity mentorship, coaching programmes and consultancy to empower women of colour to thrive. For Janah, creating the platform was partly about looking for ways to fill a gaping hole – an absence of representation “as a young 1.5 generation (born and raised in another country and migrated to New Zealand) Muslim, Maldivian-Kiwi in Aotearoa”. 

She is also the founder and chair of the Kandūfā Foundation in the Maldives, which focuses on cultural preservation and leadership development for women. A chartered accountant by trade, Janah runs a consultancy company and holds a number of board roles including: chair of the Institute of Directors Maldives, group vice chair for Hotels and Resorts Investments Maldives (HARIM), as a member of the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women (NACEW), and a member of the oversight committee of the Aotearoa NZ Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms.

Quick to point out that it was never her intention to pursue a governance or leadership path, Janah was drawn into governance after becoming involved in volunteer work. Meeting other like-minded people, it became clear: in order to create change she would need to carve out her own path and build the kind of representation she wanted to see. 

“I started simply by sharing my own story of what it was like to struggle to be my authentic self; of holding onto my rich cultural heritage and language while trying to fit into my adopted home in Aotearoa,” says Janah. 

The non-executive director studied at Auckland University and represented New Zealand at the United Nations in 2017 on ‘the Status of Women’ where she advocated for women of colour in the workplace. Since then, she has been on a mission to “create equity through leadership and strategic decision-making”. 

Janah believes Aotearoa has made “great strides towards gender equity, ensuring women can thrive and succeed as their most authentic selves”. But despite this, she says change is still needed for real progress to take place. 

In the 2023 Global Gender Gap Index, New Zealand is ranked in fourth place in terms of gender equity. While this is positive, “digging a little deeper behind the numbers… the picture is not as rosy”, Janah says. 

While the gender pay gap is reducing year-on-year, for women of colour, the gap is widening – the question is, why? 

“The lack of representation and progression pathways for women of colour remains, especially in the private sector,” says Janah, reinforcing there is no room for complacency, The Kandūfā Foundation aims to address a lack of tailored and context-sensitive leadership education for women of colour, providing them with relevant tools and resources to set them up for success.

Women of colour sit on the periphery – a place where discussions more broadly encompass the ‘impossibility of breaking through an impenetrable concrete ceiling’ – a term that is becoming more widely understood through research, especially in the United States via the BIPOC community (black, Indigenous, and people of colour).  

Janah says “concrete roadblocks” also slow down progress for women in this group, limiting their opportunities before they even reach the glass ceiling, let alone have a chance to see what might exist on the other side. 

“Women of colour cannot visualise the path ahead, because no one else like us has gone before, or there is no visible path to follow to make it to the top… no role models or plans for us to navigate ambitious career paths and chart our growth,” she says. 

For women of colour waiting in the wings for board roles, Janah says one of the barriers is a “leaky pipeline”. 

“Recruitment of women of colour is fantastic, but retention is abysmal because the board or workplace is not aware of the conditions and education needed to make sure systemic biases are dismantled, so that women of colour can thrive and succeed without having to hide themselves,” she says. 

Janah believes it will take at least a century before true gender equity is achieved, but reinforces that boards need to examine their own biases and lean into the discomfort that diversity might bring, in order to achieve much-needed change. 

“Is it acceptable that we will not be able to see a world where all of us can thrive and succeed and still be our fully authentic selves for multiple generations? We must act now to ensure that is not the case,” Janah says. 

For further reading and resources on this topic: 

• • Across the Board - Episode 2, The Changing Face of Boardrooms (diversity and inclusion, gender equity. Pay equity, poverty)
  • Across the Board - Episode 3, Hands on the Loudhailer (diversity, bullying, social issues)

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