Female employees in Pakistan got paid about 37 percent less than men in 2012, versus a gap of 4 percent for Malaysia and 10 percent for Vietnam, according to a Jan. 12 report from the International Labor Organization.

“We’re still quite far from our goal,” said Khawar Mumtaz, who heads the National Commission on the Status of Women, a state agency in Islamabad set up in 2000 to monitor how government policy promotes gender equality. “If the work environment was supportive, more women would be willing to enter.”

Rahman, the daughter of a Unilever Plc executive, graduated from Lahore University of Management Sciences in 1997 and earned a master’s degree in economics and finance from Warwick Business School in the U.K. She began her career as an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. in Singapore before returning to Pakistan. She joined BMA Capital Management, a Karachi-based brokerage, as the head of research in 2007, then took on the CEO role at IGI Funds Ltd. in 2009.

IGI Turnaround

Rahman doubled assets under management in her first year at the helm of IGI and led the firm to a 15 percent return on equity -- a gauge of profitability. The gains came even as industry assets shrank 7 percent in the year ended June 2010, according to the Mutual Funds Association of Pakistan.

Alfalah GHP Investment Management bought IGI in 2013 and Rahman became CEO of the combined firm.

“One attraction for Alfalah to acquire the fund was that they wanted Maheen to manage it,” said Syed Babar Ali, the former chairman of Nestle Pakistan Ltd. who founded Rahman’s alma mater, LUMS.

Rahman puts her outperformance down to three key calls. The first was a decision to stay fully invested in equities during the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009, a time when many peers were hiding out in cash and missed the ensuing rally. In 2011, when the post-crisis rebound in oil prices peaked, Rahman shifted from energy producers into manufacturers.

Biggest Holdings

Last year, she began favoring companies that benefit from lower borrowing costs, a move that paid off as the central bank cut interest rates to an 11-year low. Some of her biggest holdings in the IGI Stock Fund as of January included Pak-Suzuki Motor Co., Pakistan’s biggest carmaker, and Lucky Cement Ltd., the nation’s second-largest maker of the building material.