Most explanations for why women leave organizations are familiar. They point to culture, flexibility, confidence, burnout, or belonging. All of them answer the same question: why are women leaving?
That is likely the wrong question.
Culture misfit, lack of flexibility, and burnout are lagging indicators. They describe what people experience after disengagement is already underway.
If the goal is retention, the more useful question is, “when does disengagement begin?”
The first signals appear usually appear when the path to advancement is no longer clear cut.
People do not leave because they feel dissatisfied. They leave after repeated cycles of ambiguity. Promotion conversations produce no outcome. Scope expands without ownership, authority, and/or compensation. Timelines stretch without accountability.
Why the Common Explanations Miss the Point
When organizations ask why women leave, they tend to look for attitudinal causes. That framing directs attention toward surveys, benefits, and formal processes. Not because these tools are misguided, but because they are visible, measurable, and easy to track.
Advancement decisions are harder to surface. They unfold over time, involve multiple decision makers, and often lack a single owner. As a result, retention efforts gravitate toward what can be reported, even when the underlying issue sits elsewhere.
Forté’s data points to that gap. Post-MBA women trail men in promotions, number of direct reports, proximity to senior leadership, and budget responsibility, even as women’s representation and credentials increase. This pattern reflects how advancement decisions are made, delayed, or redirected.
retention efforts gravitate toward what can be reported, even when the underlying issue sits elsewhere."
How Delay Becomes the Signal
Disengagement rarely begins with explicit rejection. People do not usually leave after losing out on one single promotion or taking on one more “other duty as assigned.
It fails through accumulation. A role is discussed but never posted. Criteria are referenced but not named. Sponsorship is implied but not exercised. A promotion cycle ends without a decision.
Not every role has a next step, and not every manager controls promotion decisions. Those constraints are not the problem. The problem arises when they are left unspoken.
Individually, each instance appears temporary. Collectively, they form a pattern. Over time, that pattern becomes interpretable. Promotion is uncertain. Scope will not meaningfully expand. Contributions are valued, but ownership and authority will not follow.
By the time someone starts looking elsewhere, the decision has already been made by the system.
Why Pay Gaps Widen After Entry
Compensation data reinforces this point. Forté’s research shows that while women see meaningful post-MBA salary increases, men’s gains are significantly higher, and the gap compounds over time. This is not only an entry-level issue; it is a progression issue.
Pay lags because promotions lag. Promotions lag because scope and ownership are unevenly distributed. What appears as a compensation problem is often the downstream result of advancement delay.
Pay lags because promotions lag. Promotions lag because scope and ownership are unevenly distributed."
Why Flexibility Shows Up So Often
Flexibility is not a women’s issue. Men and women value flexible work at comparable rates, and both factor it into decisions about where and how long to stay .
So why does flexibility appear so prominently in conversations about women’s attrition?
Because flexibility becomes visible when advancement stalls.
When progress is clear and ownership is expanding, flexibility disputes tend to recede. When advancement becomes ambiguous, flexibility is one of the few remaining levers employees can see and negotiate. Its withdrawal rarely creates disengagement on its own. It accelerates a decision that has already been forming.
The issue is not where work happens. The issue is that when advancement isn’t happening, employee focus shifts to retaining control over something - and that something is flexibility.
Development Without Ownership Has a Shelf Life
Forté’s outcomes research consistently shows that women demonstrate high commitment to continuous learning and skill building, including adoption of new tools and technologies. Investment in development is not the missing input. Translation is.
Learning does not reliably lead to expanded ownership, larger budgets, or clearer paths to leadership. Over time, development without ownership or advancement becomes another form of delay. When effort continues and outcomes do not, people recalibrate.
This Is Not a Confidence Problem
Women do not leave because they misjudged their potential. They leave because the environment stops producing clear, consistent signals about advancement.
When advancement decisions are deferred, silence fills the space where outcomes should be. In the absence of clear communication, people try to make sense of the delay on their own. They often assume the issue is personal. Readiness. Timing. Fit.
That interpretation is understandable. It is also often wrong.
In many cases the delay reflects a lack of commitment at the decision level, not a judgment about capability. Criteria are unclear. Authority is split. Timing is unresolved. But because none of that is stated explicitly, individuals interpret the silence as feedback about themselves.
Over time, that misinterpretation compounds. What began as ambiguity starts to feel like assessment. Leaving under those conditions is not a failure of skill, ambition, confidence or resilience. It is a rational response to an environment that no longer makes progress a realistic outcome.
When advancement decisions are deferred, silence fills the space where outcomes should be."
Responsibility, Clarified
Retention sits with the people who control advancement.
If organizations want to retain high performing women, attention has to move away from how supported people feel and toward how advancement decisions are made, timed, and owned. That requires naming criteria early, resolving decisions on schedule, and aligning scope, ownership, and authority without delay.
Until that changes, women will continue to leave. Not because they lack commitment, but because the system has stopped making progress visible.
When advancement becomes indistinct, exiting is not surprising. It is predictable.
How Forté’s Work Fits
Addressing advancement delay requires more than insight into why people leave. It requires mechanisms that make readiness visible earlier, sponsorship explicit, and decision criteria harder to defer. Forté’s work is designed to support those levers by helping organizations identify potential sooner, strengthen sponsorship before roles are vacated, and translate development into clearer signals for advancement decisions. These efforts do not replace leadership judgment or accountability. They matter only to the extent that they reduce ambiguity and support timely, owned decisions about scope, responsibility, and progression.
Download our Best Practices for Retaining Women guide, which outlines actionable steps your company can take to support early-career women and strengthen your leadership pipeline.
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