The Australian chief executive of Goldman Sachs has called for a national debate on childcare costs to stem a flood of women leaving the corporate workforce.

Simon Rothery is one of a number of senior executives and CEOs who are so concerned at the number of women fleeing the corporate world that they have changed employment policies to halt the drain of talent.

But he admits that a major reason for the disappearance of women is the cost of childcare, which averages $7.60 an hour, according to a government report.

“Retention has been difficult and one of the reasons why a lot of women self-select not to come back when they have families is that they look at the cost of childcare compared with their salary, and it’s tough,” said Rothery.

“A national debate on childcare is something that needs to be had.”

A submission from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) to the current Productivity Commission inquiry on childcare makes clear the chamber is concerned at the effect of costs on the female workforce.

Calling for Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) style loans to help families pay for childcare costs, the ACCI submission states: “Access to these loans, which would be integrated within the whole subsidy framework, should change the financial case for women weighing up their options to work full-time, part-time or at all.”

Its controversial submission also calls for overseas nannies to be given three-year visas and suggests that the childcare rebate, currently capped at $7,500 for all families, should be subject to means testing.

Rothery, a member of Male Champions of Change, a group of CEOs working to increase diversity in corporates, welcomed the inquiry but suggested that businesses themselves could do more to help with childcare arrangements and warned that they would lose out unless women were encouraged to stay in the workplace.

“You make an investment in your employees right from the start,” he said. “If a person then doesn’t come back to work [after having a child], that’s a huge cost to you.

“Even if you take a purely commercial approach, this issue is something we have to solve.”

Statistics paint a discouraging picture of women in the corporate world.

A 2014 report by the Australian Institute of Company Directors found that women account for 17.6% of ASX 200 executives, while according to the the 2012 Australian Census of Women in Leadership, females account for just 9.2% of ASX 500 executives and hold only 12 CEO positions.

The AICD report noted that the figures for women in leadership were the highest ever but the organisation has also found that twice as many women as men hold more than one ASX 200 directorship and a quarter of companies still have no women on their boards.

Research currently being carried out by the Centre for Ethical Leadership at Melbourne Business School suggests that the reason for this is that women are leaving corporate life before they reach executive level.

Preliminary results indicate that twice as many women as men are leaving corporates.

Victor Sojo, a researcher for the centre’s Gender Equality Project, said that while at entry level, corporations attracted equal numbers of men and women, this changed further up the hierarchy.

“They are equally qualified and enter in equal numbers,” he said. “But then they just disappear.”

A decade ago the New York Times coined the phrase “opt-out revolution” to describe the flight of high-achieving American women from the corporate world.

But Australian executives believe that even the most ambitious women here are given little choice but to stay at home, hit not only by childcare costs but the unforgiving nature of a 24/7 work culture that makes no allowances for family demands.

“The phrase ‘opt-out’ implies that women have a choice in the matter,” said Cassandra Kelly, joint CEO of the financial advisory firm Pottinger. “Women who are juggling work, children and elder care often have no option [but to leave work].”

Diane Grady, a director of Macquarie Group and Macquarie Bank believes that things are harder for this generation of women than it was 30 years ago, when she became the first female partner at McKinsey to have a child.

“I could still get home at 6pm and we could afford a live-in nanny,” she said. “But today it’s hard for women to be a reasonable mother and have a career prospect. I blame companies for not making it easier for women to do both.”

Rothery, who introduced changes at Goldman Sachs that have led to a rise in the proportion of female recruits from 25 to 60%, has developed a culture of informal flexibility for both men and women so employees can come in late, leave early and work from home if necessary.

But he admitted that the jacket-on-the-chair culture works against women.

“A very senior woman on the trading floor told me that she dreaded 4pm because she had to stand up, put her bag on her shoulder and walk out and she felt people were judging her. They do. It’s human nature,” he said.

In a recent Ernst & Young report highlighting the lack of senior women in business, Coca-Cola Amatil chairman David Gonski admitted the lack of flexibility was still a major issue. He said that in the corporate world: “There is not a lot of tolerance for professionals to job share or take up flexibility options in senior management positions – we expect people to be available 24/7.”

Kelly, who co-founded the organisation the Glass Elevator which supports women in leadership roles, said she was disappointed that women were still finding it too difficult to climb the corporate ladder. “With all the endeavours we have made to get more women in leadership we are not seeing the dial move,” she said. “In some ways we’re going backward. We’ve increasingly been told we can have it all and do it all but we’ve been told a lie.”

Sojo blamed complacency for the crisis. “Ten years ago people thought there had been clear progression on the whole issue,” he said. “There was a lot of complacency because people thought we’d worked all this out; that the issues weren’t there any more. But we haven’t, and they are.”

Grady warned that companies that did not change their practices would lose out in the competition for the best and the brightest.

“It’s going to be hard for companies who don’t work to keep women,” said Grady. “They need to recalibrate if they want to retain talent.”