When we bought our house this past summer my wife played the major role in narrowing down the selection. I would then visit the houses she really liked with her when I had time. This was partly due to the fact that she had more free time during the day. She ended up being the contact person for the realator, mortgage broker, etc. And in my opinion Jenny is right, my wife was the anchor behind our decision, the house had to have the potential to become a suitable home in her eyes. Earlier on in our marraige I actually wanted to buy a really nice RV and live in it for a year living in whatever park or part of campus we felt like. Needless to say it didn't qualify as a 'home' in her mind. Also, in my few experiences of designing houses I worked almost exclusively with the wife. They consistently made all decisions from where to put the laundry room to what the overall budget should be.

Here are some stats that I came accross in a New York Times article the other day (I wrote them down quickly in a notebook while at lunch so I hope they are accurate):
* Women purchase 80 percent of consumer goods (that includes 75 percent of OTC drugs and 80 percent of health care decisions).
* Eighty percent of all checks written in the U.S. are signed by women
* Forty-seven percent of all stock holders are women.
* Forty percent of households with assets more than $600,000 are headed by women.
* By 2005, approximately 70 million women will work, compromising 55 percent of the workforce. In addition, 50 percent of all businesses will be owned by women and 4.7 million women will be self-employed.

It also stated that 80% of your total sales is generated from only 20% of your customer base. It also said that 80% of sales is made by women. This means that 16 of your 20 returning customers are women.