Opportunities and Influence: Women’s Representation and Advocacy in the Canadian Senate

The Canadian Senate is a promising venue for the substantive representation of women and other politically marginalized groups (Rayment and McCallion 2023). Weak norms of party discipline and the absence of electoral pressures mean that senators have greater latitude than MPs to act on behalf of surrogate constituencies, such as women – though these groups do not formally elect representatives, they nonetheless stake representative claims in the political sphere. Recent changes to the Senate appointment process have further reduced partisanship in the Senate, thus increasing senators’ latitude to advocate for surrogate groups. But to what extent do women’s advocacy groups leverage the Senate’s increasing capacity for the substantive representation of women? Are women’s advocates using the Senate as a venue in which to advance their policy goals? A recent analysis of contact records maintained by the Lobbying Commissioner showed that overall, lobbying directed at the Senate increased following changes to the Senate appointment process (Bridgman 2020). Drilling down into this larger scale analysis, we examine the lobbying efforts of women’s organizations and advocates before and after changes to the Senate appointment process to determine whether and to what extent extra-parliamentary women’s organizations take full advantage of the Senate’s representational role. This work contributes to the literature on women’s representation in legislative contexts, especially as it regards avenues for women’s groups to seek policy change. It opens the door for future research on the efficacy of women’s groups’ advocacy in upper houses.