Women have enjoyed uninterrupted political rights since the 1990 unification of North and South Yemen but have watched their role and voice within the competitive party process systematically decline over the course of several election cycles. The authors argue that this is the joint result of regime encroachment on political freedom and in-fighting within an emergent opposition alliance. Based predominantly on primary sources and first person interviews conducted with women activists in Yemen between 1996 and 2009, the authors detail the trajectory of women's growing exclusion and identify the largely informal avenues through which they are productively channelling their political activism, focusing in particular on gendered forms of association.