Women’s Set-Aside Will Open for Business—At Last Federal agencies will be able to set aside contracts for woman-owned businesses beginning early in 2011, SBA said, more than 10 years after the contracting program was authorized by Congress and signed by President Clinton. SBA published a final rule for the set-asides in the Oct. 7 Federal Register. The agency said it will take 120 days to set up technology and infrastructure to support the program. Set-asides will be permitted in 83 industries where woman-owned companies were found to be underrepresented or substantially underrepresented in federal contracting. Congress created a two-tiered program. In the 45 NAICS codes where woman-owned firms were found to be underrepresented, set-asides will be limited to companies owned by economically disadvantaged women. Women were found to be substantially underrepresen-ted in 38 NAICS codes; any woman-owned firm is eligible for a set-aside in those industries. However, no set-asides are allowed in many of the most common categories of services in NAICS sector 54, including IT and professional, administrative and management services. Contracts may be set aside in amounts up to $3 million, or $5 million for manufacturing. Woman-owned firms will have equal priority in set-asides with 8(a), service-disabled veteran and HUBZone companies. Companies will be allowed to self-certify their eligibility. An eligible small business must be at least 51% owned by one or more women who are U.S. citizens and women must manage the business. Companies that self-certify will be required to provide supporting documents such as birth certificates and articles of incorporation that will be open for inspection by contracting officers at a website to be established by SBA. SBA will also accept certification by federal and state agencies and approved third-party groups. The women’s contracting program languished while the Bush administration ordered repeated studies to determine which industries should be eligible. In 2007 SBA proposed permitting set-asides in just four industries, none of them significant factors in federal contracting. After outraged protests by women’s groups and members of Congress, SBA proposed expanding the program to cover 31 industries. That didn’t fly, either, so the Bush administration punted the issue until after the 2008 election. In its 2010 rule, SBA said it identified eligible industries by counting both their share of federal contract dollars and their share of contract awards. SBA has eliminated what some critics called a “poison pill” in the Bush administration proposal: the requirement that a federal agency must show that it has discriminated against woman-owned businesses before it can set aside a contract. Congress has set a 5% goal for contracting with woman-owned firms, but the government has never reached even 4%. “This rule will be a platform for changing that by providing greater opportunities for women-owned small businesses to compete for and win federal contracts,” said SBA administrator Karen Mills.