Hackett began her teaching career as an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles.
She has also taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and at the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[3] Hackett was also among the first scholars to write about the Hebrew Bible from a feminist perspective, with such articles as “In the Days of Jael: Reclaiming the History of Women in Ancient Israel,”[4] "Rehabilitating Hagar: Fragments of an Epic Pattern,"[5] and "Can a Sexist Model Liberate Us?
[8] She served for many years on the executive council of the Society of Biblical Literature, on the board of the American Schools of Oriental Research, and as an editor of the series Harvard Semitic Studies and of several academic journals.
In 1996–97, Hackett was the Hugh Pilkington Research Fellow in Biblical Studies at Christ Church, Oxford University.