I don’t think so but it appears we are losing some ground.

Catching up on reading news clippings I have collected and I ran across another eye opening article about a study from Biz2Credit posted in the Bloomberg Business Week. Biz2Creidt analyzed 14,000 loams and found out that women-owned companies were 15 percent to 20 percent less likely to be approved for small business loans within the first 6 months of 2012.

They put some of the blame on the type of business a woman is planning on opening. Most of the women part of the loans they looked at where planning on opening a retail location, which normally does not have a lot of ROI and higher expenses.

Did you know that U.S. government contracts to women- owned small businesses dropped for the second consecutive year, declining at a faster rate than awards to their male counterparts?

Sure there is less contractual work to give out and the competition has increased and the government never focused very strongly on women owned businesses. It does not help that the government has a 5% cap on work given to women and minority businesses.

I am hearing the cap will be raised but I am not sure if the hiring manager will get the message to the same time.

Several things we can do as women:

• Before you open any business, do your homework.
• When you want to be rewarded a government contract. Educated yourself and take offered training that is for free or low cost in many cases.