January 22, 2008 11:39 AM

SBA is thinking small when it comes to women and business
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 11:39 AM

Thanks to Janelle Shubert over at Babson's Center for Women and Leadership for bringing this to our attention.  The SBA rules for women getting government contracts were finally released in Dec. yet fall far short of what they should have been. 

Women who own small businesses — about a third of all small businesses in the United States, in fact — have been pushing for years for a bigger piece of government contracts, which now total $400 billion a year.

But few were happy when the Small Business Administration finally announced new rules in December to ensure that 5 percent of the contracts would go to female-owned businesses.

First, the critics noted, it took seven years for the S.B.A. to develop the rules after Congress ordered the agency to create them in 2000. But perhaps more important to the critics, among them Congressional Democrats and some business groups, the agency listed only four industries — out of 140 — where female-owned businesses could be preferred for contracts.

The best known of those was national security and international affairs; in addition, the list included coating and engraving, furniture and cabinet manufacturing and a motor-vehicles category.

Click here to read the full story on the NYTimes.