ProfessorMarian Baird

BEc(Hons) Sydney; DipEd Sydney; PhD Sydney; FASSA; AO

Marian Baird AO is Professor of Gender and Employment Relations and Co-Director of the Sydney Employment Relations Research Group in the University of Sydney Business School. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia.

Marian is a leading researcher in the fields of industrial relations, women, work and care. Her research focuses on policy responses at all levels, including government, business and unions. She has a long history of policy engagement on gender equitable organisational change, flexible work, women and leadership, paid family and domestic violence leave and reproductive support policies. Through her career as an engaged researcher, she has worked with federal and state government departments, organisations, unions and not-for-profits to improve the position for women in the workforce and society. Marian has contributed to the development of government and company policies on maternity and parental leaves, flexibility, discrimination and the ageing workforce. Her pathbreaking research on paid parental leave contributed to the introduction of Australia's paid Parental Leave Scheme in 2010. In 2022-23, she advised the Australian Government on extensions and changes to the Scheme.

Currently, she is a Chief Investigator on the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) and leader of the mature workers and care stream. Other current research projects include the female body@work project, women's economic empowerment and workplace violence in female dominated sectors. Marian is an Expert Panel Member of the Fair Work Commission, appointed in March 2023. She is a member of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations' Parent Advisory Group to improve the economic security of Australian parents, appointed in 2024.

As the first female professor in industrial relations at the University of Sydney, Marian has developed the next generation of researchers and policymakers in her teaching of industrial relations policy and strategic human resource management and as a supervisor of 13 PhD students. She received the SUPRA Supervisor of the Year Award in 2022

Marian's work is widely published and she is co-author of Human Resource Management (published by Cengage), Australia's leading text book in the field. Marian contributes to the discipline internationally as a Coordinator of the International Network of Leave Policies and Research and the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA) Gender and Employment Study Group. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Alberta, MIT, Michigan State University, University of Nottingham, Leeds University Business School and Queen Mary University of London Business School.

In 2016 Marian was awarded an AO (Officer of the Order of Australia) for outstanding services to improving the quality of women's working lives and for contributions to tertiary education. Other awards include the Best Paper Award at AIRAANZ 2023, the Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association Award in 2021, the AIRAANZ Lifetime Service Award in 2020, and being named in Apolitical's Top 100 Most Influential People in Gender Equality list in 2019 and 2018. In 2014 she received the Edna Ryan Award for making positive change for women in the workforce, in 2013 she received the AFR/Westpac Women of Influence Award in Public Policy, and in 2015 and 2003 she won the University of Sydney Business School's most engaged researcher awards.