Dama dames: China's secret weapon

Dama does not imply wealth or social status. Even if your neighbor is below the poverty line, you'll still address her as dama as long as she is of a certain age. However, the recent spate of financial news involving a demographic called Chinese dama clearly refers to women who are well off but not those female executives or while-collar women with high earning power. It would be offensive if you called them dama.

Earlier this year, when the price of gold fell on the international market, many Chinese women jumped at the chance for what they deemed a bargain, sweeping jewelry stores across the nation, including Hong Kong, clean of anything containing gold. As a result, the gold price held steady for a while. The press hailed the Chinese dama for defeating Wall Street.

Later, the gold price resumed its downward push. The Chinese press turned around and mocked the dama for their "inadequacy in investment savvy" and "foolishness" in thinking everything cheaper is worth buying.

So, who are the members of the Chinese dama? Simply put, they are the people who hold the purse strings to China's spending power. Contrary to what many Western feminists assume, in most Chinese families, especially the middle class, it is the wife who controls the family finances.

Of course there is no data, but empirical evidence is quite abundant. In many Chinese cities, the husbands turn in all their salary and their wives give them a small allowance, called "cigarette money". In the old times, when women had no access to the family bank account, they might have kept some pin money without their husbands' knowledge. Nowadays I've heard of men doing that. Of course women have kept up tradition, too, because the big money belongs jointly to the couple and is technically open to the husbands' scrutiny. On average, wives have a bigger say since they manage most of the family affairs anyway.

Chinese dama tend to have a herd mentality, but they are not easily swayed by advertisement. They tend to trust their friends and neighbors more than something printed in a glossy magazine. They talk about using various brands of cosmetics, but they often look like victims of fashion. They are down to earth, eager to bargain down a cabbage at the local farmers' market by five cents, yet willing to splurge hundreds of thousands of yuan on an item such as a gold bar.

Suffice to say, they do not read books or publications on investment and have never heard of words like "options" or "futures". But they do have an intuitive understanding of return on investment. They prefer things they can touch and feel, so there is suspicion that they are behind China's sky-high property prices. Certainly, their demands that potential sons-in-law own real estate before tying the knot are exerting unquantifiable pressure on the market.