Code of thrones: How Pakistan's tech queens are challenging the kings

Despite the relentless grip of a fickle internet — Pakistan’s arch-nemesis in business, education, and communication — Laila Khan, a young IT professional, is fearlessly blazing a trail for women in the country’s ever-evolving tech-scape.

Born and raised in Sargodha’s Shahpur Saddar tehsil, where girls were rarely encouraged to go to colleges or universities for higher education, let alone pursue careers, Khan launched her tech startup, Graphy D Skills.

As a self-taught graphic designer of great aplomb, Khan felt she needed to share her skills and their potential with others, especially homebound women aspiring to work. 

She wanted to empower them so they could earn a living from the comfort of their homes. Khan began her journey by offering a graphic designing course through 'Graphy D', but later broadened it to 'Graphy D Skills' by hiring women dreaming of having their talents displayed.

Now her tech business, which was initially a solo flight, offers training courses in editing, scriptwriting, mobile creative pro, art, painting, content writing, and more.

"Life has taught me that every person carries a lesson within them, waiting to be shared," Khan tells Geo.tv. "Knowledge grows when it is passed on, which is why I started Graphy D, to not only share my skills but to empower others. Some of those I have taught are now working alongside me, proving that when we lift others, we rise together."

In the face of all the odds typical to a semi-rural society in Pakistan, Khan completed her Master of Arts in Islamic Studies privately as the university was too far away from her home, and she couldn’t afford tuition and commute. Reflecting on her journey, Khan told Geo.tv how she first experimented with Microsoft Paint, the only software available on her family’s first computer, which they purchased years after nearly every household in Pakistan owned one.

Learning at her own pace by trying her hand at different software, Khan secured her first job managing the official Facebook page for Farhat Ishtiaq, a leading Pakistani author and screenwriter. Since then, Khan has landed multiple jobs as a graphic designer, social media manager, product designer, and customer service representative. She also got the opportunity to work for another prominent Pakistani novelist Nemrah Ahmed.

When asked what inspired her to launch Graphy D, Khan said her disappointment with the educators’ general tendency to promote rote memorisation over conceptual understanding motivated her to create a more effective learning platform.

“So, when I stepped into this field, I made sure that women from diverse backgrounds, including housewives with no prior experience or knowledge of tech, could easily grasp my work. I used the simplest language to make learning accessible, ensuring my students wouldn’t feel overwhelmed after just one lecture,” she adds.

Another issue she highlights is online scams targeting women, especially those unfamiliar with the cyber realm. They invest their money in hopes of earning large profits in a short period but fall prey to digital scams.

“This is why I wanted to create awareness that a skill is not a scam. I wanted to educate people, especially young girls, that they can only earn online if they learn a skill. So, I focused on teaching people skills that would help them secure jobs online,” states Khan.

One unique aspect that sets Khan’s initiative apart from others working to serve underprivileged women is that she provides opportunities with no questions asked. If someone cannot afford a course, she grants access based purely on their willingness to learn.

In a world where challenges can hold women back, standing together makes all the difference is what Nargis Soorty and Sameen Adil Sheikh have a firm belief in as founder and founding member of Karachi-based tech non-profit, Shine.

The tech-focused organisation strives to bring women into the fold of the tech industry. They are taught communication skills, bolstering their confidence to claim their fair share of the skill-based job market.

Led by women and focused on the future, Shine offers several courses in social media marketing and IT with special emphasis on grooming the women who take these courses. Their motto is to give the “right information, mentoring and knowledge to women,” which inspired them to start a platform to reach the masses.

Sheikh, a York University graduate, tells Geo.tv that a lack of safe work spaces exclusively for women in Pakistan stands in their way to the available employment opportunities.

The Shine founding member, who has extensive corporate experience in Canada, maintained that the hunt for a women-only space is often difficult and unsuccessful for girls for whom working from home was not an option.

Seeing this void, both Sheikh and Soorty started the tech non-profit, which offers a platform where women can interact, share ideas, find solutions, and have a sense of community.

“One of our main goals was to create a community for women that’s why we also have a physical space alongside our online operations. We want women to come in and see that they have a community. I truly believe that if women come together and support each other, they will overcome all challenges, even simple problems like logistics,” says Soorty, who is also a director at Soorty Enterprises.

Soorty added that while Pakistani women were talented and possessed skills, they lacked confidence and communication abilities for the want of guidance or mentorship.

“If they have the right support or a platform, they can do wonders as far as their growth is concerned,” she explains.

“When we first started, we reached out to universities and various companies, meeting with women employees, listening to their challenges, and identifying the key factors hindering their growth. We sought to understand how we could help accelerate their progress.”

Speaking about empowering 1,146 women through the courses at Shine, Sheikh said there were many opportunities and a number of people were doing great work, but it's being done in silos.

“There’s no single platform that showcases all women's initiatives or organisations focused on upskilling. We launched Shine to fill this gap, centralising information and highlighting outstanding work.”

Soorty and Sheikh also collaborated with Tech Valley to distribute nearly a thousand Google Career Certificate scholarships last year in their quest to empower those who cannot afford the high-priced courses.

“Because our focus is social impact, we always try to keep things accessibly priced,” says Shanze Farooq, Shine’s communication manager.

With increasing internet penetration and a growing digital economy in Pakistan, these initiatives provide women with the skills, confidence, and opportunities to excel in fields like software development, data science, and digital marketing — previously male-dominated fields in Pakistan.

SheDev, the first-ever women-led tech company in Gilgit Baltistan, is another such platform.

The platform, conceived by Zahra Nooreen in 2020, offers services globally through freelance platforms, specialising in web development, social media marketing, graphic design, search engine optimisation (SEO), and more and has trained over 1,800 women so far.

“After earning my Computer Science degree from Government College Women University Faisalabad, I returned to Gilgit-Baltistan, only to find job openings were scarce — especially for women. In my search for work, I ran into cultural, commuting, and family barriers,” Nooreen, a tech enthusiast and chief executive officer of SheDev, tells us.

“In my hometown, tech was still seen as a men’s field, making it hard for women to break in,” she said adding that then the biggest challenge was convincing families. Even though SheDev is not a non-governmental organisation, many assume that it is. However, this has not stopped them from providing opportunities to those who could not access their training.

“To provide incentives, we partner with NGOs, INGOs, and local government organisations on their projects. For instance, we're currently collaborating on a project that offers free web development training to girls, along with travel allowances to facilitate their attendance,” says Nooreen.

Women made up about 22.91% of Pakistan's labour force in 2023, according to a World Bank report, which stresses the need to increase this percentage to at least 45% by 2025.

“I believe achieving that target is challenging but possible if the government, private sector, and start-ups collaborate to empower women,” says the SheDev CEO.

Noreen, however, dreams of a future where women in Pakistan have equal access to education, training, and job opportunities in the tech industry.

She concludes that her goal is to create a community of skilled, confident, and entrepreneurial women who can "drive innovation, growth, and social change in Pakistan".

However, women are now disrupting the dynamics of the workforce for the better, mostly because the tech industry does not bind them in the shiny chains of "work from office".

They don’t have to step out of the safety of their homes if they are unable to. Through remote work opportunities in the digital ecosystem, Pakistani women can now build their careers within the four walls of their homes and even establish their businesses. For women, this pivot, among other things, has also empowered them to strike a healthy work-life balance, which is rare in conventional work environments.

Farheen Qureshi is a staffer at Geo.tv. She posts on X @farheen027

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