What causes turnover among women on top management teams?

Women have made major inroads in the upper echelons in recent years, and not surprisingly, this trend has caught the attention of researchers in the management discipline. Recent empirical evidence reveals that greater the representation of women on top management teams, higher is the performance of the organization. Representation on the team needs to be investigated in the context of managerial turnover since turnover can have an adverse impact on organizational performance. Most turnover studies have focused on the determinants and consequences of turnover among managers on the top management teams without specifically isolating the effects for men and women. This can partly be attributed to the minimal to negligible presence of women on the teams. However, as women have ascended the top ranks of organizations in large numbers in recent years, it is important to examine what causes them to turnover at twice the rate of male managers as anecdotal evidence reveals. In this study, I examine the factors that cause turnover among women of Fortune 1000 companies. Also, following turnover, I examine the paths of the women managers who left their organizations.