With reforms spanning over more than a half-century, Tunisia has been a leading country in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in regard to family law and women’s rights. Today, it continues to stand at the forefront of the modern Muslim Middle East in this respect. In accounting for the expansion of women’s rights that became the hallmark of Tunisia, previous research emphasized state feminism, or top-down interventions by the state to reform Islamic family law. These interventions did indeed shape the trajectory of women’s rights in the country from the mid 1950s to today. It will not suffice, however, to suggest that the position of Tunisia in the Arab world in regard to women’s rights today results from a history of state actions alone. Since the Arab Spring, Tunisia has witnessed the explosion of women’s agency in the form of associations that have actively pursued greater gender equity. Yet, even though several of these associations engaged in gender advocacy following the Arab Spring, they did not do so equally. I argue that one particular group was critical in spearheading the call for greater gender equity after the collapse of authoritarianism. That group was the network of secular feminists known as the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Democrates (Association of Tunisian Women Democrats), known internationally by its French acronym, ATFD. The group played a key role in the inclusion of gender equity in the 2014 Constitution, a major step in promoting women’s rights in the country. A salient point in the recent history of Tunisia is that this group, which came together first as an informal network of like-minded feminists, survived authoritarianism. It became a leading voice for women’s rights after the collapse of authoritarian brought at the same time an opening of the political space and a growing Islamist presence. Using a path analysis framework, this paper suggests that the seeds of feminist advocacy developed alongside state feminism from the 1980s onward. Even though it was not there in the 1950s when the initial top-down reforms were initiated, associational feminism grew starting in the 1980s to become part of the post Arab Spring discourse after 2011. This analysis leads us to rethink top down and bottom-up approaches to women’s rights.