Zubeida Mustafa

Zubeida Mustafa (; 1941 – 9 July 2025) was a Pakistani freelance journalist who became one of the first women to work in the country's mainstream media, when she joined the Dawn newspaper in 1975.

Early life Born in British India, Mustafa moved to Pakistan with her family after the independence of Pakistan. She was married and had two daughters.

According to Newsline, Mustafa considered longtime editor of Dawn newspaper, Ahmed Ali Khan, her mentor who taught her how to "bottle a river in a tumbler (darya ko koozay mein band karna) and how to look at a problem from the people's point of view and to never be unfair in one's writing".

Mustafa was not very fond of the current or past Pakistani political leaders. According to her interview to Newsline in 2012, she observed that Pakistanis have "a bunch of power-hungry leaders who are not statesmen by any yardstick. They are selfish, corrupt and ignorant. They have no strategy to resolve the current crisis nor do they want to".

Awards and recognition Global Media Award for Excellence (1986 and 2004) by The Population Institute, Washington D.C. for her research on population control Lifetime Achievement Award (2012) by International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF)

Dawn Media Group has set up an award for women journalists in her name, the Zubeida Mustafa Award for Journalistic Excellence.

Books Mustafa, Zubeida (2008). My DAWN Years: Exploring Social Issues (her autobiography about changes she saw in the press in Pakistan over three decades) Mustafa, Zubeida (2021). Reforming School Education in Pakistan & the Language Dilemma. Paramount Books