Marian Baird is Professor of Gender and Employment Relations, a Presiding Pro-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Head of the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, and Co-Director of the Women and Work Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School. Marian was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2016 for outstanding services to improving the quality of women’s working lives and for contributions to tertiary education. She is one of Australia’s leading researchers in the fields of women, work and family.

Marian’s research was instrumental in the development of Australia’s paid parental leave scheme, introduced in 2010, and she was a Chief Investigator on the review panel of the scheme from 2010 to 2014. She has contributed to a number of government enquiries relating to parental leave, gender equality and sexual harassment in the workplace. She is now Co-Convenor of the International Parental leave Network and is currently a Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence on Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), where her focus is on mature workers, particularly with regard to women and care.