2025/05/31 by Erica Rayment, Elizabeth McCallion · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Gender Politics and Representation
paper · doi:10.1332/25151088y2025d000000092
Recent reforms to the Canadian Senate have reduced partisanship in the upper house, where party discipline was already low and there is no electoral imperative. Without party directives, senators may have more latitude than members of Parliament to represent the interests of marginalized groups, including women’s groups. In this article, we ask: have women’s advocacy groups recognized the Senate as a promising venue for women’s substantive representation? Through an examination of lobbying records, we find that in the post-reform period, women’s groups devote a greater share of their advocacy to the Senate than to the House of Commons. These findings suggest that the affected representatives of women are engaged in strategic representational behaviour. Moreover, we find that senators who meet most often with women’s groups have been identified elsewhere as critical actors in women’s substantive representation. This article advances the study of women’s representation by making connections between critical actors and the affected representatives of women.