| Summary: |
Lawyer-activist Hina Jilani has spent a majority of her life witnessing injustice and fighting against it. The product of a political family (her father served as an opposition member of Parliament), Jilani studied law at Punjab University in Lahore. In 1980, with her sister and two other attorneys, she founded the first women's law firm in Pakistan - an organization that helped win a number of cases which later served as important legal precedents for women's rights. A year later, Jilani also helped form the Women's Action Forum in response to the Islamization of the legal system in Pakistan, which created laws which were discriminatory towards Pakistani women. The first purely secular organization in Pakistan, the Women's Action Forum organized demonstrations in 1983 which helped trigger the wider women's movement in Pakistan which continues today. |