She summited K2 while five months pregnant. Sultana Nasab. Shimshal Valley, Hunza, Gilgit-Baltistan. July 29, 2024. Early Monday morning. 8,611 meters. The second highest mountain on earth. She became the third Pakistani woman to reach the summit, after Samina Baig and Naila Kiani. She had never planned to climb pregnant. Then a selection process opened for the first-ever sponsored women climbers from Pakistan to attempt K2. It had always been her dream. She called it a golden opportunity. She joined Pakistan's first women's K2 expedition, led by Sirbaz Khan. Six women. One reached the top. The expedition lasted 45 days. The hardest part came before Camp 3. At the Bottleneck, her two climbing partners had gone up to retrieve a body. So she went ahead alone. There was black ice. At the summit, in her words: I didn't feel any altitude. I just felt at peace. She said she was happy to be at the top with her baby inside her, doing it together. She grew up in Shimshal Valley. For many women in mountain communities, she says, working through pregnancy is a necessity, not a choice. She also named the real barrier for women climbers. Money. A professional expedition can need up to $25,000 in sponsorship for gear, logistics and a trained support team. Women can do this, she says. It is never too late to adapt. 8,611 meters. One climber on the summit. Two hearts. Sultana Nasab. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

There was no school for cartoonists in Pakistan. So Nigar Nazar went to an art school that did not teach it, and drew anyway. She began as a pre-medical student. In her science classes she kept volunteering to draw diagrams for the whole class's journals, until a teacher noticed that every journal had the same diagram. She took what she calls a U-turn. Fine arts. She graduated in fine arts and English literature, then followed her parents to Karachi. She wanted a course in comic art. None existed. She went to Ali Imam, the principal of the Institute of Arts and Crafts at the Karachi Arts Council. He told her they did not have that there. But she could attend the classes and draw whatever she liked. She did. A new local newspaper, the Sun Daily, asked him for comic strips. He told them about her. That is how her character Gogi was first published. The early 1970s. Her cartoons ran in Dawn, and in magazines like Mirror and Teenager. Then television. She drew cartoons live, wrote the stories herself, and made her own sound effects. Sometimes by dropping a clay pot. She was also a diplomat's wife, and kept changing countries. Once, from Australia, she sent a summer themed strip to a Pakistani newspaper. They wrote back that it was winter at home. 2005. The Fatima Jinnah Award, for her contribution to art. 2014. Named one of the BBC's 100 Women. She went on to teach an Introduction to Cartooning course at NUST. No school taught it. She became Pakistan's first professional woman cartoonist anyway. Nigar Nazar. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

Till 1998 Pakistan had never had a women's university. She built one. From the ground up. From nothing. In Rawalpindi. Dr. Najma Najam. Psychologist. Educator. Institution builder. Fulbright Scholar. Master's degree in Psychology from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 1975. PhD in Psychology from the same institution, 1980. Trained in the United States in behavioral neuroscience at a time when that field was still being defined. She worked with people who are now considered pioneers in neuroscience. She came back to Pakistan. She joined the University of Punjab. She taught there for over 28 years. She built the Institute of Applied and Clinical Psychology into a serious academic programme. She formally trained the first neuropsychologists working in Pakistan and introduced subjects in her area of specialization that had never been taught at university level in the country before. Then in 1998 the Government of Pakistan appointed her founding Vice Chancellor of Fatima Jinnah Women University in Rawalpindi. First woman Vice Chancellor in the history of Punjab Province. Second woman Vice Chancellor in the history of Pakistan. She stayed for nine years. 1998 to 2007. She built an entire university. Academic plans. Degree programmes. Faculty. Infrastructure. Administrative systems. She built every institution that a functioning university requires from scratch and turned FJWU into one of Pakistan's recognized universities. She said her US academic experience had toughened her to take on the challenge of setting up the first women's university in Pakistan. Then in 2009 she was appointed Vice Chancellor of Karakoram International University in Gilgit-Baltistan. From the heart of Punjab to the roof of Pakistan. Two vice chancellorships. Two institutions built or led by her. Two different provinces. Two completely different student populations and institutional challenges. Over 300 papers presented at national and international conferences. Over 50 years of university teaching, research, and administrative experience. Psychology. Women's education. Behavioral neuroscience. Capacity building of women in higher education management. Pride of Performance Medal from the President of Pakistan, 2003. Fatima Jinnah Medal from the Punjab Government. Denmark-Grunvald Award from the International Council of Psychologists, 2006. For contributions to the advancement of women in psychology. President Medal from Chatham University, USA. International Council of Psychologists Medal. Professor Emeritus, University of Punjab. Two Fulbright Scholarships. 1975 to 1980. Again in 1995 to 1996. And again in 2005 to 2006. Pakistan had no women's university in 1998. She changed that. Then she went to Gilgit-Baltistan and kept going. Dr. Najma Najam. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

Pakistan has over 6,000 species of plants. Most of the world does not know what they contain. She spent her life finding out. Dr. Bina Shaheen Siddiqui. Pakistani chemist. Natural Products Chemistry. Director of the HEJ Research Institute of Chemistry, University of Karachi. The HEJ Research Institute was built by Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, the legendary Pakistani chemist who isolated the active compounds of neem and opened the world of natural product chemistry to South Asian science. She carried that legacy forward. PhD from the University of Karachi, 1980. Natural Products Chemistry. DSc from the same institution in 2001. Both degrees from a Pakistani university, both earned through the rigour of original research, both in service of a single purpose: understanding the chemistry of Pakistan's own plant world. She specialised in the chemical components of Pakistan's indigenous plants. Isolating, identifying, and characterising the bioactive compounds hidden inside herbs, shrubs, and trees that Pakistani communities had used medicinally for centuries without knowing the molecular mechanisms behind their effectiveness. She published over 412 research papers. Her work has been cited over 10,440 times by scientists around the world. Those are not the numbers of a regional scientist. Those are the numbers of a globally significant research career. Dr. Abdus Salam Prize in Chemistry, 1986. Named for the Nobel laureate and Pakistan's greatest physicist. Given to her six years after she earned her PhD. Nishan-e-Azmat-e-Ilm Plaque, Karachi University, 1989. Nishan-e-Azmat-e-Danish Plaque, 1993. Nishane-Danish Plaque, 1998. First Prize of the National Book Foundation, 1997. Star Woman of the Year Award and Gold Medal by Star Girls and Women's Foundation, 2004. Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, Government of Pakistan, 2000. Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, elected 1997. Fellow of TWAS. The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries. Distinguished National Professor, Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. She also became a Fellow of the Islamic World Academy of Sciences. She said: Many ups and downs, successes and failures were seen during this period which reformed the thinking and perspective and induced a sense of accepting challenges. She accepted every one. Pakistan's plants gave her a lifetime of questions. She answered more of them than anyone else. Dr. Bina Shaheen Siddiqui. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

The first office the Heinrich Böll Foundation ever opened abroad was in Lahore. She opened it. Roshan Dhunjibhoy. Born March 30, 1931, in Calcutta. Her father, Colonel Jal Dhunjibhoy, ran the Indian mental hospital in Ranchi. Her mother, Shirin Vacha, grew up in Germany. Her older sister was the Pakistani poet Maki Kureishi. She went to St. Joseph's Convent in Karachi. Then college in Boston. Then postgraduate studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. 1951 to 1958. UNESCO's radio division in Paris. She also worked as a journalist at Agence France-Presse. 1958 to 1962. TV producer in Hilversum, Holland. 1962 to 1978. TV producer and director for German television. She shot 25 to 30 feature documentaries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. In the 1960s she was the Indian face on German TV. The Böll Foundation's own obituary called her a pioneer and role model for many young women in Germany. 1978 to 1981. Jamaica. Sent by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, she helped set up the mass communication department at the University of the West Indies. 1987 to 1991. She sat on the board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which she had helped set up. 1993. She returned to her South Asian roots and opened the foundation's first office abroad in Lahore, Pakistan. It oversaw its work across Asia. She headed it until 2001. March 2011. She came back to Lahore for the foundation's conference on gender, religion and politics. A month later, on April 24, 2011, she died in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She was 80. Schooled in Karachi. Back in Lahore to open a door for the world. Roshan Dhunjibhoy. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

Margaret Bourke-White photographed a teenage girl in Karachi holding a lathi. LIFE magazine published it in January 1948. Zeenat Haroon Rashid. Born January 21, 1928. Daughter of Sir Abdullah Haroon, the Pakistan Movement leader from Sindh. Her father died on April 27, 1942. She was 14. Her mother, Lady Nusrat Abdullah Haroon, remained a dominant figure in the Pakistan Movement. Jinnah was a close friend of her father's. At 17, by her own account, he asked her to gather her school friends into a women's guard. He told her that women were standing shoulder to shoulder with men. Then he asked what the young people were doing. She answered: We are ready. The Sind Women's National Guard began as about 25 to 30 teenagers. White uniforms. First aid. Self defence. Encouraging people to vote. She became one of its captains. Dawn's archive dates the lathi photograph to November 1, 1947, in Karachi. LIFE's January 5, 1948 issue carried Jinnah on its cover and a story on Pakistan inside. She later said the Guard was a symbol. Jinnah wanted to show people that in Pakistan, women would do things. Her own words: We were a symbol of progress. She married Safdar Rashid. Her father-in-law, Mian Abdul Rashid, administered Jinnah's oath as Governor-General on August 15, 1947. He later became Pakistan's first Chief Justice. She died on April 8, 2017. Her daughter Syra Vahidy set up the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women in her memory, to support women who want to write for a living. A photograph made her an icon. A prize for women writers keeps her name alive. Zeenat Haroon Rashid. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

Dr. Asif Hassan was Born in Karachi Pakistan, he earned his MBBS degree at Dow Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan, graduating in 1979. He specialised in surgery on children with complex heart conditions and performed hundreds of operations over a 30-year period. Dr. Hasan received a standing ovation at the ceremony as he was joined on stage by some of the people whose lives he saved.

On 22 October 2026 the Pride of Britain stage filled with nineteen of his former patients. They were aged 10 to 43. They walked out to surprise him as he received the Lifetime Achievement Award. Asif Hasan. Born Pakistan, 1956-57. Seventy years old. He moved to UK in 1981. He joined Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital in 1991 as a transplant surgeon. Consultant cardiothoracic surgeon from 1995. For more than three decades he led the paediatric transplant programme and helped make the Freeman one of the largest and most respected centres for children’s heart surgery and transplantation in the world. More than 4,000 open-heart operations. Approximately 3,000 of them as lead surgeon. Around 400 heart transplants. The emergency call-outs and out-of-hours procedures were never counted. He took the cases other hospitals called too risky. Sixteen years ago a teenager’s new heart was beating and her chest would not close. The donor heart was too large. Every other centre had refused the transplant. On the table he invented a way to close her. It worked. The technique, later called the bootlace closure, has since been used for other children whose chests were too small for the available heart. Cecilia Adamou, the girl from that night, was one of the nineteen on the stage. He co-led Newcastle’s bridge-to-transplant programme. Mechanical devices such as the Berlin Heart kept infants and children alive long enough for a donor organ. He trained children’s heart surgeons in the UK and abroad. On leave he travelled to Pakistan with his wife to train local surgeons and operate on complex paediatric cases. He retired earlier this year after thirty years as head of paediatric cardiac surgery at the Freeman. The award was broadcast on ITV on 22 October. Nineteen people walked onto a stage in London because a Pakistani surgeon in Newcastle had refused to call their cases impossible. Asif Hasan. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

She lost both parents before she was six. Kaniz Wajid Khan. Born June 24, 1920, in Kotwara, north India. Her father, a taluqdar, died when she was three. Her mother died two years later. She grew up at an English boarding school in Mussoorie. She stayed even for the summer holidays, when other children went home. She said she learned early to rely on herself. 1937. She married Dr. Sahibzada Wajid Khan, a civil servant. 1938. In Delhi, a social worker took her into poor settlements to work with the families living there. 1939. She chaired the Central Indian Red Cross Committee, organising relief for the war effort. Her first meeting with Jinnah was at a Muslim League gathering in Delhi. Her husband told him he could not join the League, but his wife was an ardent supporter. Jinnah said they were happy to have his better half. 1947. Begum Ra'ana Liaquat Ali Khan asked her to organise the Women's National Guard in Rajshahi, East Pakistan. She learned to use a rifle. She trained other women to do the same. 1949. She became a founding member of the All Pakistan Women's Association. That same year she opened its first branch in Rawalpindi. She started a programme for orphans. Families sponsored children living in camps and orphanages. It grew into Pakistan's first legalized child placement programme for abandoned babies. 1956. She became the first secretary general of the All Pakistan Council for Child Welfare. It opened the first home for abandoned babies. 1964. As a welfare officer in the federal government, she set up Utility Stores, 20 community centres and 16 vocational training centres for government employees. 1969. Tamgha-i-Khidmat. 1980. She took charge of the Education Trust Nasra Schools. It grew into a network of low cost schools for over 7,500 children. 1986. She helped found the SOS Children's Village in Karachi. At 82, she still drove herself to work every day. She died on August 28, 2021, after a brief illness. She was 101. She lost both parents before she turned six. She spent the next 95 years building places for other people's children to belong. Kaniz Wajid Khan. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

She held a commercial pilot's licence in 1959. PIA still would not let her fly its passenger planes. Shukriya Khanum. Born in the mid 1930s. July 1959. Straight after graduating from Government College, she qualified as a commercial pilot. The first Pakistani woman ever to do so. PIA was the country's only airline. Its rules did not allow women to fly commercial planes. So she took the job she was offered. Flight instructor at PIA's training centre. For many years she taught cadet pilots the ground course subjects they needed for their own commercial licences. She also took flying enthusiasts on joy rides at the Karachi Flying Club. It took 30 years before another woman followed her. 1980. Ayesha Rabia and Maliha Sami took PIA's pilot test under Zia's military government. They faced restrictions. Rabia later said she waited nine years because the rules did not allow women to fly. 1989. After Zia's death, PIA called them for formal pilot training. That year Rabia went to see Shukriya Khanum in Karachi. Shukriya was happy to see her. Her advice was simple. Focus on professionalism. Never let anybody believe that being a woman means you cannot do the job. 1990. Maliha Sami flew as first officer. The next day, Ayesha Rabia did. 2005. Rabia became the first Pakistani woman to captain a commercial scheduled flight. Shukriya Khanum died of cancer on May 14, 2017. She was 82. The rules kept her out of the cockpit. The women who followed flew the planes she was not allowed to. Shukriya Khanum. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

In 1967 she was the most powerful woman in Pakistani government. She walked away from it entirely. Back to Abbottabad. Back to the gardens. Back to the people who actually needed her. Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan. Born Amritsar. May 1913. Died June 17, 2007. Aged 94. Eldest daughter of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan. Premier of Punjab. One of the dominant Muslim political figures of late British India. She grew up inside the highest levels of the subcontinent's political life. She was educated at the Aligarh Muslim Women's School and Queen Mary's College Lahore. In 1934 she married Abdus Salim Khan, a civil servant from Talokar, Haripur. He served both British India and the new Pakistani diplomatic service. She raised her children. She built her home. In 1957 her husband died. She moved to Abbottabad and immediately found what needed doing. She joined the network of Pakistani women building the country's social infrastructure through sheer will and organization. Lady Viqar-un-Nisa Noon. Begum Zari Sarfaraz. Begum Kulsum Saifullah Khan. Dr. Attiya Inayatullah. Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah. The people building hospitals and clinics and family planning networks across a country that had no budget for them. Family Planning Association of Pakistan. Pakistan Red Crescent Society. She led both. Then 1962. Ayub Khan needed an Education Minister for West Pakistan. He called her. She became the first woman in Pakistan's history to hold a provincial cabinet post. Five years as Minister of Education. She overhauled policy. Expanded school networks into underserved districts. Pushed curriculum reform across a province that ran from Karachi to Khyber. Then her term ended. She walked away. No second appointment sought. No political career extended. Back to Abbottabad. Back to the Red Crescent. Back to community work and the gardens she loved and the people who needed help not headlines. Italy gave her the Adelaide Ristori Award in 1980 for lifelong promotion of cultural and youth education. She died peacefully in Abbottabad in 2007. Ninety-four years old. Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan's daughter. Pakistan's first woman cabinet minister. The woman who chose the gardens of Abbottabad over the cabinet rooms of Lahore. The Peshawari Begum who came to Hazara and never left. Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

Before Dr. Ruth Pfau arrived, she was already standing in Karachi's slums treating leprosy patients when no one else would touch them. Her name was Dr. Zarina Fazelbhoy. Born in pre-partition British India into a family that deeply valued education, public service, and moral integrity, she trained as a physician when few women entered medicine. Following Partition, she made Karachi her home, marrying into the prominent Fazelbhoy family. Together, they built a quiet, close-knit life grounded in community service, passing down a legacy of philanthropy to their children. In the 1950s, when leprosy carried overwhelming social stigma, patients in Karachi were cast out by their families and forced to live in squalor along McLeod Road. Dr. Fazelbhoy refused to look away. 1956. Years before Dr. Ruth Pfau arrived in Pakistan. She joined a small group of volunteers providing basic medical treatment, food, and bandaging to outcast leprosy patients. When Dr. Pfau landed in Karachi in 1960, Dr. Fazelbhoy became her anchor, key collaborator, and lifelong confidante. Together, they transformed a humble one-room dispensary into the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre (MALC), building an eight-story medical facility that became a national beacon of hope. Dr. Fazelbhoy dedicated over four decades to MALC, leading fundraising campaigns and providing medical care until her failing health forced her to retire in 1997. To honor her unyielding service, MALC established the "Dr. Zarina Fazelbhoy Welfare Fund" to support underprivileged patients in perpetuity. When she passed away in February 1999, she left behind a transformed healthcare landscape where compassion conquered social stigma. A gentle pioneer whose quiet courage helped heal a nation's most forgotten citizens. Dr. Zarina Fazelbhoy. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰 Dear reader I Couldn't find more pictures of hers. If anyone have them please share

She created a virus-free potato. That sentence sounds simple. It fed Pakistan. Dr. Azra Quraishi. Born September 22, 1945. Tonk State, Rajasthan, India. Died November 22, 2002. Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Aged 57. BSc and MSc from the University of Punjab. Then Paris. PhD from the University of Paris-Sud in 1976. Botany. Plant science. The molecular mechanics of how crops grow, fail, and can be made to do better. She came back to Pakistan and went to work at the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council. She developed virus-free seed potatoes. Potato crops in Pakistan suffered chronically from viral infections passed through seed stock. Infected seed produced infected crops. Generation after generation of contaminated planting material reducing yields across the country. She applied tissue culture technology to produce clean, virus-free seed potatoes from the ground up. The result was an estimated 5% increase in Pakistan's total potato production. 5% of a national crop is not a small number. It is millions of kilograms of food. It is the difference between a family's harvest covering its needs or falling short. She did not stop at potatoes. She launched micropropagation projects for banana and date palm. She used tissue culture to screen salt tolerance in local wheat and rice cultivars. Finding the varieties that could survive Pakistan's increasingly salt-affected agricultural soils and produce reliable yields. Work that directly addressed Pakistan's long-term food security in the face of soil degradation and climate pressure. She published more than 140 research papers. 140 papers. 57 years of life. The mathematics of that are extraordinary. France awarded her the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. The French Republic's highest honour for distinguished academics and scientists. Given to those who have made exceptional contributions to universities, education, and science. She also received the Norman Borlaug Award. Named after the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Green Revolution. Given in Pakistan by PARC to outstanding agricultural scientists. She died in Rawalpindi on November 22, 2002. She was 57 years old. 140 research papers. Virus-free seed potatoes. Banana and date palm propagation. Salt-tolerant wheat and rice. The Ordre des Palmes Académiques from France. The Norman Borlaug Award from Pakistan. All of it in 57 years. Dr. Azra Quraishi. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

Pakistan was a few years old when she arrived at Cambridge. The country she had come from was still building its ministries, its courts, its universities, its foreign service from nothing. She came back with a PhD in political science and spent the next 50 years building what Pakistan needed. Dr. Masuma Hasan.born 30 April 1941 in Delhi, British India. Descent from Abdullah Ansari, Pir of Herat. Born into an intellectual family in Pakistan's formative decades. University of Cambridge. PhD in Political Science. Returning to a country where the institutions her degree qualified her to analyse and reform were still being invented. She chose to build them rather than study them from a distance. She represented Pakistan at the United Nations General Assembly. A Pakistani woman on an international diplomatic platform in the decades when Pakistani women were not expected to be there. In 1999 she was appointed Federal Cabinet Minister for Women's Development, Social Welfare, and Special Education. Progressive institutional reforms. Policy frameworks that outlasted the ministry she held. A tenure measured not in press releases but in what changed structurally. Then the work she is perhaps most associated with. Chairperson of the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. The PIIA. Pakistan's premier institution for geopolitical analysis, international relations scholarship, and diplomatic training. She held that position for decades. She transformed it. Under her the PIIA became a serious intellectual hub. Rigorous analysis on regional security. Foreign policy frameworks. Statecraft. The kind of work that informed how Pakistan understood its place in the world rather than simply reacting to it. She mentored generations of researchers, diplomats, and civil servants. Young people who came to her for guidance and left with a framework for thinking about Pakistan's role in international affairs that they carried into careers across the foreign service, the civil service, and academia. She authored critical analyses on regional security, foreign policy, and governance. Work that combined scholarly rigour with the practical understanding of someone who had sat inside the institutions she was writing about. A Cambridge PhD in the turbulent decades after Partition. 50 years of institution-building after that. Pakistan has produced few people who combined intellectual depth with public service at this level and across this span of time. Dr. Masuma Hasan. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰 --- **OPTION B: She Came Back hook** She could have stayed at Cambridge. She came back. Dr. Masuma Hasan. Born into an intellectual family in Pakistan. She earned her PhD in Political Science at the University of Cambridge in the turbulent decades following Partition. A country barely standing was producing scholars who could have built careers anywhere. She built hers in Pakistan instead. She represented Pakistan at the United Nations General Assembly. A Pakistani woman speaking for her country on the world's most significant diplomatic platform before that was considered ordinary or expected. She was appointed Federal Cabinet Minister for Women's Development, Social Welfare, and Special Education in 1999. She used the tenure to push for progressive institutional reforms and policy frameworks that had structural staying power beyond the appointment itself. Then decades of service as Chairperson of the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. The PIIA. Pakistan's premier institution for geopolitical analysis and diplomatic training. She transformed it. From an institution that existed into an institution that mattered. Rigorous geopolitical analysis. Regional security scholarship. Foreign policy frameworks. Diplomatic training for generations of young Pakistanis entering the foreign service and civil service. She mentored researchers, diplomats, and civil servants whose careers spread across Pakistan's public institutions. She authored analyses on statecraft and regional security that informed how Pakistan engaged with the world. She combined what Cambridge had given her with what Pakistan needed from her. Intellectual depth. Institutional commitment. 50 years of both simultaneously. Pakistan produces scholars. She built the institutions that produce them. Dr. Masuma Hasan. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

From 8am to 3pm she begged on the streets. From 4pm to 9pm she went to law school. She told her family she was being funded independently for university in Karachi. She was begging to pay for it. Nisha Rao. Born Lahore. Pakistan's first transgender lawyer. She left home at 18 with nothing. Ran away with two other transgender people. Arrived in Karachi with no money and no family support. She moved into Hijrat Colony in Karachi. Lived with the transgender community there. Began begging on the streets to survive. Children at school had called her Rima Sharmili and she had cried. Her family had not supported her. She had felt depressed and alone and different in a country that had no framework yet for what she was. She decided she would do something big. Police brutality against the transgender community was constant. They were harassed. Arrested without cause. Beaten. There was no one in the legal system who understood their lives or fought for their rights. A teacher told her: police will be afraid of you once you become a lawyer. She enrolled at Karachi University. Studied International Relations for her bachelor's degree. Made friends. Then studied law. LLB. She begged from 8am to 3pm to fund it. She attended classes from 4pm to 9pm. In 2020 she became Pakistan's first transgender lawyer. She joined the Karachi Bar Association. She put on the black coat. She walked into the courts of Karachi as a lawyer. She has contested over 50 cases. Harassment cases for women and transgender people. She responds at midnight when the community calls her. She works with an NGO fighting for transgender rights. She also established the first Christian church for transgender people in Pakistan. A 2017 census counted 10,418 transgender people in Pakistan. Rights groups believe the real number is at least 500,000. Most living in secret. Most with no one fighting for them. She is fighting for them. Her goal is to become Pakistan's first transgender judge. She said it to Reuters. She said it to every journalist who asked. She started on the streets. She is headed to the bench. Nisha Rao. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

She taught at the National College of Arts for 31 years. Four of them as principal. Salima Hashmi. Born December 1942. New Delhi. Salima Ahmed. Daughter of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Alys Faiz. The family came to Lahore in February 1947. Faiz had left the British Indian Army in 1945 and taken the editorship of The Pakistan Times and Imroze. She was eight, when her father was jailed. School at Queen Mary's, then Kinnaird High School after the arrest. FA at Lahore College for Women. Design at the National College of Arts. Then England in the early 1960s. Diploma in art education from the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, 1965. Master's from the Rhode Island School of Design, 1990. The Bath Academy invited her back in 2016 and gave her an honorary doctorate from Bath Spa University. She married Shoaib Hashmi, a professor at Government College and the Lahore School of Economics. Two children. Yasser Hashmi and Mira Hashmi. 1981. She started Rohtas Gallery to show work that could not be seen in government venues during the Zia era. 2001 Rohtas 2. At her house in Model Town, for the work of young artists. Thirty one years teaching at NCA. Four as principal. From 2003 to 2015. Dean of visual arts and design at Beaconhouse National University. Founding dean of the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design there. Professor Emerita from 2017. She has organised international exhibitions in England, Europe, the United States, Australia, Japan and India, and lectured across those same cities. In May 1998, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. She was Principal of the National College of Arts at the time. She answered with paintings. The series is called The People Wept at Dawn. Works from this period are dated 1998, 1999 and 2000. She said all that energy could have gone into food, shelter, health and education for everyone. The books. Unveiling the Visible: Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan, 2002. ActionAid and Sang-e-Meel. Interviews and research over a decade on fifty women painters across three generations. The first of its kind in the country. Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, 2006, with Yashodhara Dalmia, Oxford University Press. The Eye Still Seeks: Contemporary Art of Pakistan. 50 Years of Visual Arts in Pakistan, with Quddus Mirza. A founding member of the Women's Action Forum. Vice-chair for Punjab of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Member of Amnesty International. In March 2021 she became a founder member and advisor of the Southasia Peace Action Network, launched online by nearly 90 people. Caretaker minister in the Sethi ministry. Pride of Performance, 1999. Alma Award, 2016. Sughra Rababi Lifetime Achievement Award, 2024. Lifetime Achievement Award at the Lahore Literary Festival, 2024. Named for the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2025. She is still living. Still mentoring. Still curating. The father's poems were the house she grew up in. The college was the room she ran for a generation. Salima Hashmi. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰

On 28 November 2000, Shahida Jamil became the first woman to lead Pakistan's Law Ministry. Karachi. London. Islamabad. Johannesburg. Her path ran through all four. She studied political science and English literature at St. Joseph's College in Karachi. She trained as a barrister at Gray's Inn in London. She has taught human rights and comparative constitutions at the Sindh Muslim Government Law College. Her syllabus covered the British, Swiss, Turkish and Chinese constitutions. She also consulted for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. November 1999. She became the first woman to serve as Law Minister of Sindh. A year later the federal call came. 28 November 2000. Law, Justice, Human Rights and Parliamentary Affairs. She took over from Aziz A. Munshi. In March 2001 she addressed the UN Commission on Human Rights. She said almost 44,000 women were about to take seats in local councils. She said the Citizenship Act had been amended so women married to foreign nationals could claim Pakistani citizenship for their children. March 2002. She moved to the Ministry of Environment, Local Government and Rural Development. August 2002. She led Pakistan's delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. She served in the federal cabinet until 23 November 2002. In November 2007 she was back in the caretaker cabinet, as Minister for Women Development, Social Welfare and Special Education. Her mother, Begum Akhtar Sulaiman, was a social worker. Her maternal grandfather was a Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her paternal grandfather was a Chief Justice. She added her own name to that list. The first woman to lead Pakistan's Law Ministry. Barrister Shahida Jamil. Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰