Women-Owned Businesses Received Under 5% of Federal Contracts in FY2018

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The National Women’s Business Council’s (NWBC) just released their 2019 Annual Report, titled,  “Advancing Women Entrepreneurs. Growing America’s Economy.” The report identifies three important initiatives and provides policy recommendations for the following: (1) improving access to capital for female founders, (2) encouraging more women entrepreneurs to start companies in STEM-related fields, and (3) removing obstacles for women business owners in rural areas. 

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NWBC Report Profiles Rural Women Entrepreneurs

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The National Women’s Business Council recently released the report Rural Women Entrepreneurs: Challenges and Opportunities, which provides insight into the dynamics and trends of rural women who own their businesses. It not only highlights opportunities and challenges rural women face in entrepreneurship compared to rural men and non-rural women, but also suggests areas for further research and policy examination to help empower this group through business ownership.

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NWBC Addresses Opportunities and Challenges for Millennial Women Entrepreneurs

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The National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) has released a new report profiling millennial women entrepreneurs, and the opportunities and challenges they face. The profile includes informative qualitative and quantitative data and research focus groups for a comprehensive look at how the millennial generation, those born between 1982 and 2000, view entrepreneurship and how obstacles such as student debt inhibit millennial women from pursuing running their own businesses.

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NWBC Releases Comment on Annual Business Survey

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The National Women’s Business Council (NWBC), a non-partisan federal advisory council for the White House, Congress, and U.S. Small Business Administration, released their comment on the U.S. Census Bureau’s proposed Annual Business Survey (ABS). In addition to applauding the Census Bureau’s efforts at provide a larger breadth of data on employer firms, the Council suggests data considerations for a more comprehensive look at the state of women entrepreneurs and nonemployer firms in the country.

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NWBC Entrepreneurial Ecosystems & Their Service of Women Entrepreneurs

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Women entrepreneurs are on the rise, and they are leaving their footprint on the nation’s economy. In 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau reported an estimated 9.9 million women-owned firms, 35.8 percent of all U.S. firms classifiable by gender, and the total estimated receipts from those firms was $1.4 trillion.

Nevertheless, women-owned businesses are still an underrepresented segment in the economy and require support for their continued growth. The National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) is providing insight on how federal and regional stakeholders can help.

In April of this year, the NWBC released Entrepreneurial Ecosystems & Their Service of Women Entrepreneurs, a research report conducted with Washington CORE, which analyzes local entrepreneurial systems to identify influential actors and mechanisms that aid, or present a barrier to, the support and growth of women-owned businesses.

The report utilizes the “entrepreneurship ecosystem” model, which Washington CORE defines as “a set of interconnected entrepreneurial actors, entrepreneurial organizations, institutions and entrepreneurial processes which formally and informally coalesce to connect, mediate and govern the performance within the local entrepreneurial environment.”

This approach, the report explains, “emphasizes the importance of the overall environment within which an
entrepreneur establishes and grows her business,” helping us understand the resources she can leverage, as well as gaps within the economy that may hinder her.
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