Although according to a recent survey of married wealthy women, they make two-thirds of their family's purchase decisions, GoldFinger will not be joining in the childish nudging and sniggering that the people who did this survey may be expecting. Far from it: this extraordinary figure is very worrying, for two reasons. First, it shows that one woman in three is still failing to take up the reins that are her birthright and her duty and second, it doesn't tell us who makes the other one-third of these decisions. Is it the wife's mother? Is it the pet marmoset (who looks very like the wife's mother) with a Harrod's catalogue, a Kuoni Travel brochure and a set of darts? Is it their personal trainer (who wasn't hired for his brains)? Or could it even be the nice chap from Coutts & Co? It is certainly not the male of the household, who is much too busy making the decisions that really matter: was Scholes offside when the ref disallowed that goal (no way), would Muhammad Ali have beaten Rocky Marciano (easily), could anyone manage England worse than Steve McClaren (mmm, toughie), how would Boris do as Prime Minister (he'd be fantastic!). Health care decisions, including choice of plans and providers, are the domain of women in half the households surveyed; in the other half, men are encouraged to blow their own noses, though under careful supervision. Women call the shots on home improvement purchases and indeed on home improvement operatives, nearly all of whom have the same telltale XY chromosome pattern. Even in financial affairs, the female influence is profound: 22 per cent of married wealthy women make all the family's investment decisions on their own; another two-thirds report making financial decisions jointly but only the wrong ones. "Winning over wealthy women is a do-or-die proposition for companies in industries as varied as travel, healthcare, financial services and home improvement," says Milton Pedraza, of the Luxury Institute, who did this survey. At least that's what the lady who answered the telephone there said he'd said.