She co-founded and leads 'Women Journalists Without Chains', a group established in 2005 to advocate for press freedom and human rights.

[4][5][6][7][8] Karman gained prominence in Yemen after 2005 as a Yemeni journalist and an advocate for press freedom, particularly following the denial of a license for a mobile phone news service in 2007, after which she led protests.

In early 2011, she shifted the protests to align with the broader Arab Spring movement, inspired by the Tunisian revolution that overthrew the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Her father, Abdel Salam Karman, is a lawyer and politician who served as the Legal Affairs Minister in Ali Abdullah Saleh's government before resigning.

According to her brother Tariq Karman, she also received a death threat from "a senior Yemeni official" on 26 January 2011, warning her to stop her public protests.

[23] Like many Yemenis, Karman was forced to leave Yemen after the Houthi takeover of the capital, Sana'a, due to the worsening security situation.

From her new home in Istanbul, she continues to speak out against injustices in Yemen, including the war waged by the Saudi-UAE-led coalition and U.S. drone attacks.

[24] On 17 December 2020, Karman reported that Houthi rebels raided her home and office, taking control of both locations after looting them.

[27] Karman has said she has received "threats and temptations" and was the target of harassment from the Yemeni authorities by telephone and letter because of her refusal to accept the Ministry of Information's rejection of WJWC's application to legally create a newspaper and a radio station.

The group advocated freedom for SMS news services, which had been tightly controlled by the government despite not falling under the purview of the Press Law of 1990.

[11] Karman replaced the niqab for the scarf in public on national television to make her point that the full covering is cultural and not dictated by Islam.

Her stand on the ouster of Saleh became stronger after village lands of families around the city of Ibb were appropriated by a corrupt local leader.

[43][44] She attempted to enter Egypt to join protests against the coup but was banned from doing so by the Egyptian military for "security reasons" and was deported back to Sana'a.

[47] As a response to the January 2015 events of the 2014–15 Yemeni coup d'état, she spoke out on what she believes is collaboration between former president Saleh and the Houthi rebels to undo the 2011 revolution by ending the transition process.

Karman often objects to U.S. drone policy in Yemen, calling the use of them "unacceptable" and has argued that using them in populated areas violates human rights and international laws.

[49] Karman condemned the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, stating: "Unfortunately, this coalition deals with this war just as a battle to fire bombs and throw missiles, ignoring the consequences."

In a 9 April editorial that appeared in The Guardian, she wrote:[51] After a week of protests I was detained by the security forces in the middle of the night.

This was to become a defining moment in the Yemeni revolution: media outlets reported my detention and demonstrations erupted in most provinces of the country; they were organised by students, civil society activists and politicians.

[52] Speaking of the uprising she had said that: "We will continue until the fall of Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime...We have the Southern Movement in the south, the (Shia) Huthi rebels in the north, and parliamentary opposition...But what's most important now is the jasmine revolution.

[54] On 18 June she wrote an article entitled "Yemen's Unfinished Revolution" in The New York Times in which she assailed the United States and Saudi Arabia for their support for the "corrupt" Saleh regime in Yemen because they "used their influence to ensure that members of the old regime remain in power and the status quo is maintained."

[58][59] At the time, Karman was in Washington, D.C., where she said the female protesters who burned their makrama were "reject(ing) the injustice that the Saleh regime has imposed on them.

"[60] After the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, Tawakkol Karman became increasingly involved in mobilizing world opinion and United Nations Security Council members to assist the protesters in ousting Saleh and bringing him before the international court.

Karman, who was present for the vote, criticised the council's support for the GCC's proposal and instead advocated that Saleh stand trial at the International Criminal Court.

Saleh would transfer his powers to Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi to start a political transition, according to the terms of the agreement.

"[65][66] The Nobel Committee cited the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, which states that women and children suffer great harm from war and political instability and that women must have a larger influence and role in peacemaking activities; it also "[c]alls on all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, to adopt a gender perspective.

[68] Upon announcing the award, the committee chairman Thorbjørn Jagland said: "We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society."

After the announcement, Karman traveled to Qatar where she met with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and also requested the Doha Centre for Media Freedom's assistance to set up a television and radio station, which would be named Belqees TV, in honour of the Queen of Sheba, in order to support female journalists and to broadly educate Yemeni journalists.

[75] She is on the International Advisory Board of the MBI Al Jaber Media Institute in Yemen which offers free training in all aspects of journalism.

[78] She has given scholarships to promising students from Yemen to study at Istanbul Aydın University at undergraduate and postgraduate level, in conjunction with the MBI Al Jaber Foundation.

[84][85] Yemeni filmmaker Khadija al-Salami highlighted the role that women played in the Yemen uprising in her 2012 documentary film The Scream, in which Tawakkol Karman is interviewed.