Rate My Professor Marian Baird

Professor Marian Baird AO is Professor of Gender and Employment Relations in the University of Sydney Business School, Head of the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies since 2016, and Presiding Pro-Chancellor since 2018. She earned her BEc (Hons), DipEd, and PhD from the University of Sydney, completing her doctorate in 2001 on industrial relations in greenfield manufacturing sites under Professor Russell Lansbury. Baird's career began in the mid-1970s at the University of Sydney, followed by positions in the NSW Department of Education, Queensland Teachers’ Union, and teaching at Western Sydney University. She rejoined the University of Sydney in the mid-1990s, was appointed professor in 2009, served as a Fellow of the Senate from 2011 to 2018, and founded the Women, Work and Leadership Research Group in 2006, which she co-directs with Professor Rae Cooper. She is also convenor of the Body@Work Project and Director of Mentoring at the Centre for Population Ageing Research (CEPAR).

Baird's research focuses on gender and employment relations, including women, work and family policies, parental leave, flexible working arrangements, mature age workers, elder care, and women's economic empowerment across the life course. Prominent publications include co-authoring 'Strategic Human Resource Management' (2002, 341 citations), 'Flexible Careers Across the Life Course: Advancing Theory, Research and Practice' (2018, 325 citations), 'Bringing the “Right to Request” Flexible Working Arrangements to Life' (2015, 173 citations), 'Dynamics of Parental Leave in Anglophone Countries' (2015, 138 citations), and 'Human Resource Management: Strategy and Practice' (10th ed., 2020). As Chief Investigator, she has led ARC-funded projects in CEPAR and others on gender equitable change and work-family policy. Her policy impact includes campaigning for Australia's national paid parental leave scheme adopted in 2010, advising government boards on parental leave, gender equity, and workplace sexual harassment, and reviewing women and leadership in the NSW Public Sector. Awards encompass Officer of the Order of Australia (2016) for services to women's working lives and tertiary education, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, AIRAANZ Vic Taylor Distinguished Long-Term Contribution Award (2020), Edna Ryan Award (2014), Australian Financial Review/Westpac Women of Influence in Public Policy (2013), and Apolitical’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Gender Equality (2017, 2019). She was Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Industrial Relations (2009-2021), President of AIRAANZ (2005), and President of the Industrial Relations Society of NSW (2015-2016).