New Zealand politician and academic Marilyn Waring was BOTD in 1952. Born in Taupiri where her parents owned a butchery, she studied political science at the University of Waikato. She joined the conservative National Party while still a student, supporting a private member’s bill to decriminalise homosexuality. In 1975, aged 23, she became New Zealand’s youngest Member of Parliament. Despite a stormy relationship with Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, she was appointed to chair the influential Public Expenditure Committee. A long-time campaigner for women’s rights and nuclear disarmament, she declared her intention in 1984 to cross the floor and support the Labour Party’s policy to make New Zealand nuclear free. Fearful about losing a then one-seat majority, Muldoon called a snap election, losing to Labour in a landslide. Waring left politics later that year and became an academic, focusing on public policy, gender equality and human rights. In her 1988 book If Women Counted, she critiqued traditional economics that ignored the importance and value of unpaid work traditionally undertaken by women. It is now considered a seminal work in feminist economics. In 1976, she was outed as a lesbian by tabloid newspaper The New Zealand Truth, which she refused to respond to at the time. Since leaving politics, she has been more open about her sexual orientation, and was a prominent supporter of same-sex marriage legislation. Her life and work was the subject of Terre Nash’s 1995 documentary Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics. She published her political memoirs in 2019, and was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020. Openly gay since forever, her current relationship status is unknown.