Maria Baers was born on 6 August 1883 in Antwerp, Belgium, into a devout Catholic family.
Maria Gabriella Baers was born on 6 August 1883 in Antwerp, Belgium. She grew up in a devout Catholic middle-class family that valued education and social engagement, formative influences that would shape her later career as a pioneering social worker, educator, and politician.
Her early exposure to Catholic social teaching and the burgeoning Christian labour movement in Belgium set the stage for a lifetime dedicated to the advancement of women workers, particularly in the textile and domestic industries where exploitation was rampant during Belgium's industrial expansion.
Her birth in this period of rapid industrialization in Belgium placed her at the heart of a society undergoing profound social transformation, one she would later help to reform through organizing and legislative advocacy.