The Utilization of Women-Owned Small Businesses in Federal Contracting
Source: RAND Corporation

In 2000, the Small Business Reauthorization Act authorized restricting competition for federal contracts on a discretionary basis to women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) in industries where they are underrepresented, i.e., where the share of contracts awarded to them is small relative to the prevalence of like firms in the pool of those “ready, willing, and able” to perform government contracts. Underrepresentation is commonly measured by a disparity ratio. A disparity ratio of less than 1.0 suggests that the firms are underrepresented in federal contracting, one greater than 1.0 suggests that they are overrepresented.

This report presents disparity ratios for WOSBs, computed in four ways: based on number of contracts and on contract dollars for the population of all employer firms, and based on number of contracts and contract dollars for the population of all firms that have registered as potential bidders for federal contracts.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Government and politics, Small business and entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.