Mid-career retention of women - "we need better childcare provision"

I don't disagree, OP. One of my pet theories is that longer maternity leave lays down the pattern that "women stay off work to look after children, men go out to work" and it is really hard to shift away from that after eg a year. One of many reasons why we need split parental leave instead.

I agree to a point about needing to help women without children who hit the glass ceiling. But looking around where I work (civil service), with literally one or two exceptions the only very senior women are those without children. So although there is a wider issue about what is preventing more women stepping into the top jobs, I do think that there is a very specific children issue for mothers who want careers too.

Very good points op. One of the reasons I like my current job is we're a small team who all have children and the men seem to do as much of the childcare angst stuff as the women (eg last min annual leave when child sick, amending hours to do school drop off...)

Oh god how depressing.

How about we start a conversation about changing the outdated rhetoric that building a successful career depends on you being in the office 9-5 (for which read of course 8-7) five days a week... That worked when families had one breadwinner who was able to concentrate on work to the exclusion of all other stuff (and I don't just mean the kids there, I mean domestic work, arrangements for house maintenance, community activities, care of elderly parents etc too). But it simply isn't possible to function long-term if both adults in a family are out of the house 7am - 8pm, HOWEVER good your childcare provision.

I agree that childcare is an extremely important topic. Having attended a few meetings about retention of women, I found that:

1. It is depressing, as you said, that this is a woman's issue.

2. There are women without children. They too face some mysterious barriers at work which has nothing to do with childcare. We never get to talk about that because we spend all our time talking about childcare. We alienate such women by not addressing their concerns.

3. I find that the lack of will of some employers in childcare provision means that we can talk all we like and provide as much flexibility as humanly possible, but in the end what is needed was the employer putting in some money. If that is not forthcoming it seems all doomed ... Again, it is, or ought to be, in everyone's interest to nurture the next generation, but no, it's a woman's problem ....

Women face more barriers than childcare. I find it frustrating that we never get to the bottom of that.

As it is, I make it my mission to substitute the word "mother" with parent/carer whenever I can and invite as many men as possible to attend meetings and give their views... Some say it's political correctness. I say there is not nearly enough of it.

I know what you mean. All discussions on how to retain women in their careers that I've been involved in more or less end up in a discussion about childcare. I see that in the state we are in at the moment, childcare tends to be a big issue for women, but I think we simply need to do more than that. One reason is as you have said about partners taking equal responsibility. The other is that some research show that single women without children still do not progress as well as married men with children (in academia, at least). If we continue to be mired in childcare debate we will not be able to deal with this issue.