Administration Issues Blow to Women-Owned Businesses

by Kolbe Franklin, Program Assistant
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a series on the final days of the Bush Administration.

In a troubling move, today the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) published a final rule on procedures for awarding contracts to women-owned small businesses, severely weakening a program that helps these businesses receive their fair share of federal contracts.

In 2000 Congress enacted the Women’s Procurement Program to address the discrimination that women and minority owned businesses often face regarding lending, access to capital, and access to federal contracting opportunities.  This Program set a goal that 5 percent of federal contracting dollars be awarded to women-owned small businesses.  But although the Program was enacted 8 years ago, this goal has never been reached.  While about 30 percent of small businesses are owned by women, they are awarded only 3.4 percent of federal contracts.

The rule published today not only signals SBA’s intent to limit the industries in which the contracting goal can be applied, but it also requires that each federal agency determine whether it has itself engaged in discrimination before using the flexibility granted by the program.

Despite the obvious need for the continuation of the Women’s Procurement Program, the rule published today imposes prohibitive barriers that virtually ensure that the program will never be used.  Moreover, while the rule will undoubtedly be detrimental to women-owned businesses, it may also be used to impose barriers to programs that encourage gender equity in education and employment.

It’s another sad day for women, courtesy of the Bush Administration. 

Check out the NWLC press release on the SBA rule here. 

For more on the Bush Administration’s latest proposals that would diminish women's rights and opportunities, visit NWLC’s website.

Comments

[Celtic jewellery]

Yes the view of the post is right. Due the SBA's final rule there may chances to be a sad for women.

[Wm. A. / Janet M. Corkran]

This is a typical action of a PNAC Republican administration of hateful politicians who make no excuses for their unbridled hate for Women, Minorities, Children, Fairness, Justice, Privacy, Sex, Separation of Church and State, Freedom, Habeous Corpus, Law, Representative Government, Natural Beauty, Wildlife, Working People, Treaties, the Public School System, the Military, New Orleans, Global Warming, Intelligent Humans, and the Constitution of the United States of America. Wyoming Cheney selected Halliburton to be the TOP War Profiteer, and will brook no competition at the Trough. Bush is too stupid to know what the hell is going on and could care less. There is no statute of limitations on WAR CRIMES, and ANY Justice official from any country in the world can charge these 2 War Criminals for crimes against humanity. It would be poetic justice supreme if that group were WOMEN ATTORNEYS.