Letter to the Editor: SBA's Proposed Rule Raises No Hurdles

The U.S. Small Business Administration admires the achievements of the women quoted in a recent Business Monthly story on federal contracting for women-owned small businesses (WOSBs).
Two of them have had great success securing federal contracts. They did so by developing their companies to be ready, willing and able to compete on a level playing field with all other potential contractors.
These women illustrate that the biggest barrier for increasing federal contract dollars to WOSBs isn't that there are no contracts specifically set aside for women. Rather, the problem is too few small businesses owned by women are competing for federal contracts.
According to the data, women own more than 10.6 million businesses in the United States. But only 63,000 of them are registered to compete for federal contracts, which is less than 0.6% of the total. Yet, those few companies won 3.4% of federal contracting dollars in 2006 [the most recent data available]. That amounts to $11.6 billion, up substantially since the $4.6 billion recorded in 2000.
Barbara Kasoff of Women Impacting Public Policy is off base when she says those numbers show "an awful lot of them ... are left out of the process." In fact, there are thousands of women-owned companies that could be competing for federal contracts that have not chosen to enter the process.
SBA's goal is to get thousands more registered and competing. In this age of partisanship, people want positive solutions. Helping more women-owned small businesses compete for government contracts, and doing it in a constitutional way, is a winner for all sides.
-Fay Ott, Associate Administrator for Government Contracting and
Business Development, U.S. Small Business Administration