Women lose more ground than men for small-biz awards

Federal contracts to female-owned small businesses dropped for the second consecutive year, declining at a faster rate than awards to their male counterparts. The women’s contracts slid 5.5 percent to about $16.4 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 from $17.3 billion in fiscal 2011, according to data from Bloomberg. Awards to small firms owned by men fell 4.1 percent to $80.9 billion.

The gender gap may reflect stiffer competition over a shrinking pool of contract revenue as well as the bureaucratic burdens associated with a new effort to reserve awards for female-owned firms, according to former procurement officials and small-business advocates. The government set a goal in 1994 of awarding at least 5 percent of the total value of eligible contracts to female-owned businesses. It has never met that target. Women captured about 3.2 percent of the total, according to federal procurement data.