Jordan Peterson, Women, and Who Really Makes 80% of Consumer Decisions

“The debate about gender and the market can’t be won with a single sentence—or with a single disputed statistic like the 80% figure. It is a nuanced discussion.”

In what is perhaps his most famous interview appearance yet—which currently stands at over 12 million views and 300,000 likes—Jordan Peterson had a particularly interesting response to his interviewer’s claim that “markets are dominated by men.” With a striking fierceness that was absent from his other answers, he rejected the possibility of such a reality. Instead, he argued that “the market is dominated by women” and stressed his point that women “make 80% of the consumer decisions.”

This line of argument remained largely uncontested by his Channel 4 counterpart—an uncharacteristic action for a host that had been and remained extremely combative for the duration of the program. Cathy Newman’s choice not to press Dr. Peterson’s point is perhaps to be expected, given that this statistic has been echoed by major media sources for years as indisputable fact. As an excellent investigative piece by The Wall Street Journal recognized, however, this “fact” is rather an echo; everyone repeats it, but nobody quite knows where it originated from.

Where does it actually come from then? Many cite it as coming from the pen of one Marti Barletta, who is part-women’s marketing consultant and part-author. She has published three books, all of which are on the subject of marketing towards women, and the “80% figure” comes from one that was published in 2002, aptly titled Marketing to Women. When pressed on its veracity, she admitted that even she had no idea if it were actually true or not, conceding that it was nothing more than a “rule-of-thumb number” with little statistical backing. In reality, when it comes to the role of women in the economy, the situation is much more complicated.