She is loud and up-front. Her language isn't always suitable for the vicar's tea party.

She is something of a star, with that rare ability in an academic to write crisp sentences in plain English. Her book The Future of Australia combines hard research with readability. She's a demographer in demand by the media and by students.

But Dr Allen's route has been tough. It turned on a single moment. When she talks about it, her voice chokes and her eyes mist over.

In her late teens, she looked into her newborn baby's eyes and realised that she had to sort her own life out for her daughter's sake.

One way led down to ruin. The other involved hard work. She chose the other.

"I could either die in a gutter with a needle in my arm or get back on track," she said.

"At 16, my parents booted me out. At 17, I had my first child.

"I was holding my newborn and I had a seizure and fell unconscious. I came to in less than a minute and I was holding her and thinking 'I've got to get this together'."

"I had no family so this baby was more than just a baby. It was my connection to society.

"I had someone to fight for. The fire in the belly ignited."

The fire stays lit. She has a burning anger about the disadvantages which people at the bottom struggle against. She doesn't say it but she is a class warrior - a class warrior with a sharp brain so she can make the arguments based on hard facts.

And she knows what she's talking about because of her own experience.

She left school after being abused sexually. "I'm a victim of child sexual abuse, within the Catholic system. My perpetrators, and those that enabled them, haven't had to face their crimes," she Tweeted.

"I lost the lottery of life," she said.

But the arrival of her baby persuaded her to enrol in TAFE to start undoing the disadvantage she was born to. She followed through to a degree at Macquarie University and a doctorate of philosophy at the Australian National University where she is a lecturer.

Her discipline - demography, the study of populations and society - enables her to shine a light on the rarely recognised class system in Australia.

"Australia has a class problem, Canberra in particular, with hidden poverty that makes it really difficult for people who have hidden disadvantages," she said.

She says the epidemic has worsened the problem because it's widened the gap between the haves and have-nots.

People who were able to work from home have done better than those in areas like hospitality. She says workers without a settled employer, are more likely to have suffered than those in permanent jobs with ongoing salaries.

She fears that once the epidemic has passed "inequality will bubble to the surface".

"We've been granted a gift with COVID: it's forced us to stop and reconsider our position. It's forced us to make deliberate decisions about where we go next.

"We need to put in measures now to ensure that the next wave of crises will be minimised. I don't think our politicians and our policy-makers look beyond their own experience so they are not making decisions for those people who we are leaving behind.

"They know these things are happening but for whatever reason, there is no will to address them."

High on Dr Allen's agenda is addressing the disadvantages women have.

"Women are lumped with doing everything, and that's such an entrenched social norm. Women are told that they can have it all but if they want it all, they have to do it all," she said.

"Women are carers and employees but also do the bulk of household duties.

"What's really telling is that even when a male and female partner are both working full-time, the woman will still do the bulk of caring and the bulk of household labour - by a lot."

Affordable and easy to access childcare is one answer. She says it needs to be flexible to help parents who work unconventional hours.

"We have a society which values men more than women and until we address that we can't progress further as a society," she said.

"What has to give here is that society has to recognise that it's not just about motherhood. It's about parenthood."

She thinks fathers and mothers would benefit - mothers as a burden is lightened; fathers when they "can be the parents they want to be".

"Men want to be active fathers," Dr Allen said. "They just need to be supported to do so.

"Australia has so many things to be proud of. We sometimes don't recognise our strengths in the way people care for each other and what we've achieved as a nation.

"But at the same time, we are still a work in progress. There's so much that remains to be done."

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