Marian Baird is one of Australia’s leading researchers in the fields of women, work and family. She was awarded an AO in 2016 for outstanding services to improving the quality of women’s working lives, particularly for her contribution to the introduction of Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme in 2010. She takes a life course approach to investigate women’s changing work and reproductive lives and their interaction with government and employer policies. She is currently chief investigator on the Centre of Excellence on Population Ageing Research.