Without an environment that helps parents juggle child-rearing and work, it will be tough to prop up birth rates or prevent women researchers from quitting, he said.

Mr Yeo, a former chairman of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), noted how there was strong support for parents with children at research institutes in Sweden and Denmark.

In Denmark, fathers take their children to their labs, where there are subsidised childcare centres.

In Sweden, Mr Yeo met a female director who took time off with her three children.

'Early childhood, nurturing, education are done within the organisation, not in some remote third-party childcare centre. They have no maids there, yet they are able to grow the population,' he said.

When he visited Sweden's famous Karolinska Institute two years ago, some 65 per cent of the 300 PhD graduates were women. Children were running around, and every department had its own centre for them.

'It costs money, but it's a deliberate investment,' he said.

Mr Yeo noted that half of A*Star's scholars are women. 'I wouldn't want them to drop out because of family. That would be $1 million down the drain,' he said, referring to the amount a scholarship is worth.

ZAKIR HUSSAIN