I can be, I think not surprisingly, specific, because the big barrier here is the most invisible one, and that is the unpaid work that is still assigned to women by virtue of their gender. I agree that the pillar of domestic violence relates directly to it, because domestic violence is one of the biggest factors that keeps women in a situation in which they may spend more time than they'd prefer on unpaid work responsibilities, and their very identity may end up becoming beyond their control to shape it.
But the universally proven way to deal with this is to lift the burden of unpaid work from women's shoulders. It would actually take only an increase in the degree of sharing with men and with society to change that burden completely, and it could be done for less money than is being spent for an awful lot of other things right now.
I will give you a quotation from a very recent Statistics Canada study that looked directly at the very question you're considering, and that is this. The report said:
Mothers in the labour force in Quebec multiplied rapidly after its $5 [a] day universal care system was introduced in 1997.
Between 2001 and 2004, about 60% of all day care spaces added in Canada were [added] in Quebec, which has 43% of all Canadian children registered in day care.
During the same period of time, young women's rates of participation in post-secondary education and paid work in Alberta fell, as the number of child care spaces there remained inadequate and their birth rates increased.
Now, I'm an advocate of women's choice, and I believe that solving our future demographic employment labour market problems by isolating women and saying “choose to have more children” is not the right choice. I think Quebec shows the way, and the choice should be between affordable, accessible child care, supporting both the education phases of life and the working phases of life, and the choice, if someone can afford it with or without the assistance of government, to stay at home and care for their children.