Should employers pay towards childcare costs? Companies ARE keen to appoint women to the board - but they find it far easier to put them in non-executive roles rather than giving them the levers of power. That looks dangerously like window-dressing. So why, 15 years after Dame Marjorie's took charge at Pearson, are executive directorships all too often jobs for the boys? Perhaps a report due out this week alights on one of the problems: the cost of childcare. The Resolution Foundation says working full-time is hardly worthwhile for many second-earners once they've shelled out for nanny/childminder/nursery. Because many women earn less than their partners, they end up taking years out to look after the children, whether they like it or not, and by the time the kids are at school, they've been out of the workplace for too long to catch up with their male colleagues who have leapt to the top of the career ladder in their absence. Dame Marjorie managed to do it and have children, but many women can't, and at least some of those who end up deciding they can't have it all may, with the right support, have been the FTSE 100 bosses of the future. So maybe the Government's efforts are best directed towards childcare costs, rather than imposing quotas. A Childcare Commission is due to report "this Autumn" - but we're now told that, for the purposes of the review, Autumn runs until Christmas Eve. And, I hope I'm wrong, but there is little expectation that the proposals put forward by the Commission will be radical enough to make a real difference. A lot of this is because of lack of money, so smart ideas from other countries may end up being unaffordable. In Denmark for example, there's a national guarantee of a childcare place for all children from six months to six years. Poorer families pay nothing, others are billed a maximum of 10pc of their income. Even if costly solutions like that may be a non-starter, there's a lot of money in the system at the moment which could be made to go much further. The charity 4 Children reckons a quarter or even a third of childcare cash doled out by the Treasury is "lost in transit" - soaked up in admin costs and the like. And some bright ideas needn't hit the taxpayer at all. In Holland, employers pay a third of childcare costs. If there was the political will behind this, businesses - as well as promoting today's Dame Marjories to their boards - might dig deeper into their pockets to help nurture the Dame Marjories of the future too.