[2][3] Shaheed has over 25 years of research and activist experience, using a gender and feminist lens on issues of rural development, labour, culture, religion and the state.
[4] She has particularly focused on promoting and protecting cultural rights through policies and projects for marginalised communities, including women, the impoverished, religious and ethnic minorities.
[5] She served as United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2009 to 2015, when the role was taken over by Karima Bennoune.
[4] In 1998, Shaheed edited with Sohail Akbar Warraich, Cassandra Balchin and Aisha Gazdar, the book Shaping Women's Lives: Laws, Practices and Strategies in Pakistan.
with Khawar Mumtaz, chronicling Muslim women's movements in South Asia from the turn of the 20th century up till the mid-1980s.