The goWholesale Blog

SBA program for women biz owners drags on, incites protest

January 11th, 2008

What began as an effort to benefit businesses owned by women has turned into yet another headache for lawmakers. The Small Business Administration invested in extensive research to find out which types of women-owned businesses were being underrepresented when it comes to landing government contracts. They narrowed it down to four:

Nationally security and international affairs;
Coating, engraving, heat treating and allied activities;
Household and institutional furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturing;
Motor vehicle dealers.

Essentially, the proposal would allow contractors to give preference to women-owned businesses in those four categories with the idea being that they would be giving preference to these most underrepresented groups thus increasing the number of contracts granted to women-owned businesses. But this is also where the controversy comes in.

Women who own businesses that do not fall into those four categories are saying that they already have enough trouble landing government contracts only to be further pigeonholed by this proposal (despite its good intentions). The efforts to level the playing field in fact are thrown even more out of balance by singling out specific groups.

On top of it all, this effort began 8 long years ago and it doesn’t appear to be coming to fruition any time soon.

What are your thoughts?

(Click here to read the full SBA proposal )