By Juliet

This blog originally featured as a guest article in the Financial Mail Women's Forum.

A recent story on FMWF highlighted the woefully small number of female CEOs and board directors among the UK’s top companies.

A fierce debate rages about how we can redress this balance – is legislation to set quotas the answer, as Sarkozy is proposing in France and as happens already in Norway and Spain?

I don’t think so — I think the CBI is closer to the mark, when it says companies need to impose more flexible family-friendly working patterns, for example, putting systems in place which allow people to work from home when their children are ill. But I’d go further than that. I think it’s not just up to enlightened businesses to impose better HR policies – we need to change the working culture in this country.

In the UK, far too much business is still done over breakfast meetings and evening dinners. Contrast that with how people live and work in the Netherlands, where working part-time is commonplace in highly-skilled professions; and tax incentives are also conducive to women working.  Almost everyone has dinner together at home at six in the evening. The result is that the Netherlands has one of the highest rates of working women in the country – at 71 percent, compared with an EU average of just 57 percent.

According to a recent report from nef (the new economics foundation – an independent think tank) the average two-adult household works an extra six hours a week compared with 30 years ago. Nef suggests we should move towards a 21-hour working week: “We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours. And we could even become better employees: less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive.”

I’d love it if a 21-hour working week became the norm. There’s no doubt that the long-hours working culture we have in the UK acts as a real deterrent to high-achieving women once we have children.

For most people, childcare is relatively inexpensive and easily available between the hours of eight and six (notwithstanding long waiting-lists for good nurseries, and provided your child isn’t unwell). Outside those hours the costs and accessibility skyrocket. One of my Good Energy colleagues used to be a television news producer, working anti-social shifts. She stuck it out for three years after having children, but with half her salary going on childcare, eventually she gave up her job – she didn’t feel it was worth it. Now she works part-time, earning less now than she did eight years’ ago, but with a better quality of life.

Fortunately Gordon Brown has done a U-turn on his misguided plan to abolish tax relief on childcare vouchers. But the high cost of childcare in this country still remains an impediment to many women working – even at executive level and on executive salaries.

Yes, the government currently allows us £243 a month tax-free to cover childcare costs. But, taking into account travel and evening commitments, I need about 60 hours’ childcare a week. My tax-free allowance covers about two-and-a-half days a month. The rest has to come out of my after-tax salary – and my nanny then has to pay tax on what I pay her too. I’ve always felt it was not only unfair but a huge disincentive that working women should have to pay tax twice for their childcare. Until childcare costs become a tax-deductible business expense women in business will never be competing on a level playing field with men. After all, good quality childcare is as essential to me as a businesswoman as my laptop and Blackberry.

Unless we address these issues, women will continue to struggle to achieve a seat on the board – and the UK’s business culture and our economy will be poorer as a result.