The case for staying, the case for going, and how to tell which is yours
It is the Monday after your performance review, and the number that stays with you is not your rating. It is the one from the Deloitte survey a colleague forwarded without comment: only 5% of women plan to stay with their current employer more than five years. You have been here nine. You read it twice and closed the laptop.
The review was fine. "Strong year. Keep doing what you're doing." Your boss said it kindly and meant it, which is the problem. "Keep doing what you're doing" is a description of a plateau. Nobody on the leadership team was told to keep doing what they were doing. They were asked what they wanted next.
What is at stake
If you stay, you keep the things that are hard to rebuild: the trust, the people who finish your sentences in meetings, the retirement match that vests fully in two years, a commute you could do asleep. You also keep the plateau, and plateaus last exactly as long as you let them.
If you go, you trade all of that for a story with no ending yet. New boss, new politics, a year of proving things you proved a decade ago. The headhunter's enthusiasm is real, and so is the fact that she gets paid when you sign, not when you are happy.
The turn
The 5% is not a verdict on staying. It is a verdict on staying by default. The women in that survey are not saying they will leave. They are saying they will not promise to stay, which is a different and healthier thing. So the question is not whether you should be one of the 5%. It is whether you would take this job again today, at this pay, with this boss, if it were offered fresh. If the answer is yes, stay with your eyes open. If the answer is "well, there's the match," you have your answer too, and it is not the match.
Why this is bigger than one review
The same Deloitte survey, 7,500 women across 15 countries, found that 36% say their stress is higher than a year ago and 29% rate their mental health as poor. Loyalty is not what is being measured there. Exhaustion is. A woman who stays nine years in a job that stopped growing in year five is not being loyal. She is being quietly absorbed, and the company's gratitude will arrive as a memo, not a chair.
Three things to do this week
1. Write the two offers. On one page, describe your current job as a recruiter would pitch it: title, pay, boss, scope, next step. On another, the best realistic alternative. Read both cold. One of them will look like a job you would take.
2. Ask the question your review skipped. "What would need to be true for me to be considered for the next level, and when?" A real answer has a date in it. "Keep doing what you're doing" does not.
3. Take one outside conversation. Not an interview, a coffee. It costs an hour and tells you what you are worth to someone who has not already priced you in.
The number was never telling you to leave. It was telling you that most women have stopped assuming they will stay, and that it may be time you stopped assuming too.