del.icio.us
Digg
Sphere
Stumble
Technorati
Twitter
A Fair Share of Federal Contracts
By Bizbox
We've written about the small business community's concern over the federal government's alleged failure to give the proportion required by law of its own contracts to small businesses. A New York Times article explores a more specific group that has allegedly been left out: small businesses owned by women, which have their own quota of federal contracts they're supposed to receive--5% of all federal contracts, to be exact. Instead, last year such businesses received only 3.4% of federal contracts. And, according to the U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce, even that number is likely overstated since many companies with male CEOs were included in that data.
The Times as well as Sharon McLoone reported that the Small Business Administration has issued a final rule to expand from four to 31 the number of industries to which the 5% rule applies. While that's better than the four-industry status quo, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), want female-owned small businesses in every industry to be eligible. The interest group Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) has endorsed that proposal.
Additionally, WIPP and American Express OPEN (which is BizBox's sponsor) have established Give Me 5 (as in 5%) to educate women CEOs on how to stake claim to federal contracts.
We're talking 10.1 million women-owned small businesses employing 19.1 million people and contributing nearly $2.5 trillion to GDP, and that's according to the Small Business Administration itself. What say we give those businesses 5% of federal contracts? It seems like the fair and right thing to do. Also the legally mandated thing to do.
Comments (0)October 8, 2008 12:17 AM
