Institutional disruption and women’s substantive representation: the Senate of Canada as a case study

This article asks how new (gendered) rules are established within changing institutions. We focus on the Canadian Senate, which underwent reforms to its appointment process in 2014–2015. As corresponding institutional changes were established, the Senate’s rules and norms were disrupted. We ask: did feminist actors leverage the state of flux in order to regender institutional rules? We examine the case of Bill C-65 (2018), legislation that strengthened workplace violence and harassment rules in federal workplaces, including the Senate. Using content analysis of discursive texts and qualitative interviews, we identify the critical actors who helped reform those gendered rules and we argue that newness—both new actors and new rules—was a factor in successfully establishing gender-sensitive policies. Based on this case, we suggest that institutions undergoing reforms writ large present opportunities for feminist actors to establish new rules and norms within them.