A study released earlier this year by Yahoo found that a variety of duties generally assumed to be done by women were quite often done by men. Fifty-one percent of men involved in the research, for example, claimed to be the primary shopper for their household's grocery needs.
An article in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week took issue with the commonly used figure that 80 percent of household spending in the U.S. is controlled by women.
Ira Mayer, publisher of Marketing to Women, told the Journal, "There is never any sourcing of the number. It's become accepted folklore."
A survey of nearly 4,000 Americans 16 and older last year by Futures Co. found that 37 percent of women said they are the primary person responsible for shopping decisions in their homes. Similarly, 31 percent of men said they were the primary person. Eighty-five percent of women and 84 percent of men said they shared the primary responsibility.