Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah (22 July 1915 – 11 December 2000) was a Bengali Pakistani politician from Bengal, diplomat and author. She was the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from the University of London. She was Pakistan's ambassador to Morocco from 1964 to 1967, and was also a delegate to the United Nations. Family and education Ikramullah was born as Shaista Akhtar Banu Suhrawardy into the Suhrawardy family to Hassan Suhrawardy and his wife Sahibzadi Shah Banu Begum. Sahista's mother was Nawab Abdul Latif's granddaughter. She studied at Loreto College, Kolkata. She was also the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from the University of London. Her doctorate thesis, "Development of the Urdu Novel and Short Story", was a critical survey of Urdu literature. Marriage and children She married Mohammed Ikramullah in 1933. They had four children: Inam Ikramullah Naz Ashraf Salma Sobhan Princess Sarvath of Jordan Political career After she was married, she was one of the first Indian Muslim women in her generation to leave purdah. Muhammad Ali Jinnah inspired her to be involved in politics. She was a leader in the Muslim Women Student's Federation and the All-India Muslim League's Women's Sub-Committee. In 1945, she was asked by the Government of India to attend the Pacific Relations Conference. Jinnah convinced her not to accept the offer, as he wanted her to go as the representative of the Muslim League and to speak on its behalf. She was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India in 1946, but never took the seat, as Muslim League politicians did not. She was one of two female representatives at the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in 1947. She was also a delegate to the United Nations, and worked on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention Against Genocide (1951). She was Pakistan's Ambassador to Morocco from 1964 to 1967. Publications She wrote for Tehzeeb-e-Niswan and Ismat, both Urdu women's magazines, and later wrote for English-language newspapers. In 1950 her collection of short stories, called Koshish-e-Natamaam, was published. In 1951 her book Letters to Neena was published; it is a collection of ten open letters supposedly written to Indians, who are personified as a woman called Neena. The real Neena was one of her in-laws. After the Partition of India, she wrote about Islam for the government, and those essays were eventually published as Beyond the