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It's a coordination problem. While an individual woman can decide that she wants to e.g. get married before having sex, the guy she wants probably won't be willing to go with that, and so will find another girlfriend. If she's super hot she might be able to drive a harder bargain, but it would still probably entail going for a less eligible guy than she would otherwise be able to get (in which case 'pickiness' would work against her goals).
That's why (relative) sexual conservatism really only works within religious subcultures. In those groups, everyone is on the same page about what is expected.
Aria has a planned post called 'Dump early, dump often' which I expect would be her way around this conundrum.
Then the current dating market is not women's fault, it's men's fault for demanding sex without commitment, punishing women who would commit, and picking women who won't commit. If you set up conditions like that, why then be surprised you get women who chase after the chad who won't commit because at least he's hot? Ugly Aethelred wants sex but not marriage (yet), Handsome Leofric wants sex but not marriage (yet), so why shouldn't Eadgifu pick Leofric because at least he's better SMV?
That description assumes that all men are equally commitment-phobic, which is obviously not true. The men with more options are less likely to commit, holding the attractiveness of the woman constant. Previously norms and a lack of optionality restricted men and women in such a way that they were incentivised to couple up young or be left behind. Now that those restrictions are gone, we see women who are pathologically picky and men who want to sow their wild oats and that's why everyone hates the apps.
Of course, blaming 'men' or 'women' collectively is futile. Nobody had a meeting and decided this stuff. It's an emergent property of various technologies (the pill, smartphones) and various trends (urbanisation, liberalism, secularisation) interacting and acting on individuals who follow incentives and norms that they themselves didn't set.
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