Ms. Gill’s career began when, after passing a bachelor’s in political science with a role of honor, she chose to become a lawyer and a politician, despite the challenges of entering a profession in which most are male, Muslim, and of higher caste in Pakistan. As a legislative member, Ms. Gill contributed to enacting laws related to women, children, and religious minorities. From 2013 to 2018, she was a member of the legislative Punjab Assembly, and from 2015 to 2018, she was the convener of the Punjab Minority Advisory Council. She became a Professional Fellow in 2017 and has been an Executive Member of the Pak-US Alumni Network (PUAN) since 2021.
She completed her master’s degree in Public Policy the same year and was invited to be a member of the Global Advisory Committee under the Initiative for Sanitation Workers (ISW). She later became a core committee member. The Initiative is a joint Global advocacy project for the health, safety, and dignity of sanitation workers of ILO, WHO, World Bank, WaterAid, and SNV, partially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is also a founding member of the Minority Women’s Forum, established in 2020.
As a legislative member, she contributed to several women-related initiatives and legal & policy reforms, including the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act 2016 and family laws of religious minorities. Due to her years-long struggle, the reforms in Christian personal laws were included in Punjab’s Women Empowerment Package, 2017. She was also the key motivator behind the Punjab Government’s decision to end discriminatory eligibility for non-Muslims to be recruited as sanitation workers.
She is the co-author of Pakistan’s pioneer research, Shame and Stigma in Sanitation: Competing faiths and Compromised Dignity, Safety and Employment Security of Sanitation Workers (2019), and the lead author
of Stories of Resilience and Resolve: An Intersectional Study on the Plight of Non-Muslim Women and Girls in Pakistan (2022).
Her main areas of interest are social inclusion of marginalized minorities, minority women and girls’ issues, improving the socio-economic and working conditions of vulnerable working classes, and mainstreaming religious minorities in political and parliamentary processes.
