My forthcoming book is titled Reforming Representation: Women and Institutional Change (contracted with McGill-Queen’s University Press, submitted in August 2025). In the book, I ask whether and how the gendered institutional rules of Parliament shape outcomes for women in civil society. I focus on the case of the Canadian Senate, which underwent significant reforms to its appointment process in 2015. As an appointed legislature with low levels of party discipline, the idiosyncrasies of the Senate can tell us much about alternatives for institutional design in Canada and around the world. I find that changes to the Senate to reduce the role of political parties led to an increase in senators’ inclination and ability to represent women’s interests: as the power of political parties weakened in the Senate, senators were able to pursue other representational interests, such as women’s. The influx of independent senators restructured the rules and norms of the institution, and senators leveraged their new institutional context to advocate for policies that would benefit women in civil society. In particular, independent senators were more responsive to women’s civil society groups in committee meetings, and both independents and partisans used the new norm of amending government legislation to introduce amendments that would benefit women. The book’s findings challenge notions that institutions are set in stone, offering promising insights for feminist democratic reformers: institutional reform can be leveraged by critical actors to ensure that our political institutions are responsive to the needs of civil society.