Excerpted with the permission of the Olathe Daily News June 5, 2001

...Although businesses owned by women account for 38 percent of all businesses in the United States, they received a mere 2.5 percent of the $189 billion in federal contracts awarded in fiscal 1999, the most recent year for which data was available.

That is half the government-wide goal of 5 percent, a target that has been in place for five years. The goal is among several the government aims at disadvantaged small businesses but no mechanism exists that forces agencies to meet it.

Meeting the challenge will be particularly difficult because the Pentagon is losing the specialists who match businesses with contracts, said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., chairman of the small business panel in the Senate. Hurt most are women who seek to win federal jobs, Bond Said.

Though contracting goals in some government programs, such as the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development program, are measured in an effort to boost compliance, there are no reliable measurements for women-owned businesses. Efforts to include women-owned businesses in such a program are backed by lawmakers including Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan., a member of the House Small business Committee.