Image: Professor Marian Baird (supplied)
Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke has announced the appointment of CEPAR Chief Investigator Professor Marian Baird AO as one of three new Fair Work Commission Expert Panel Members. Professor Baird will sit on this year’s Annual Wage Review Panel.
Professor Baird brings extensive experience in pay equity and will bolster the Commission’s capacity to properly consider the gender pay gap when making decisions. She also has broad knowledge and experience across social policy, workplace relations and economics.
Professor Baird and the other two new panel members, Dr Leonara Risse, Senior Lecturer in Economics at RMIT University, and Senior Treasury economist Mark Cully, have been appointed for 5-year terms, commencing this month.
Marian Baird is Professor of Gender and Employment Relations and Co-Director of the Women, Work and Policy Research Centre in the University of Sydney Business School.
She is a leading researcher in the fields of industrial relations, women, work and care. Her research focuses on policy responses at all levels, including unions, business and governments. Her current research projects are on gender and inclusion in Australian Universities, the female body@work project and the ageing workforce. She is a Chief Investigator and Director of Mentoring at CEPAR.
Professor Baird is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and in 2016 Marian was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for outstanding services to improving the quality of women’s working lives and for contributions to tertiary education. In 2019 she was named in Apolitical’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Gender Equality list for the second year in a row.
Professor Baird has received numerous grants from business and government to study parental leave in Australia, gender equitable organisational change, and work and family policy. She has contributed to a number of government advisory boards and reference groups relating to parental leave, gender equity, flexibility of work and sexual harassment in the workplace.