Women-owned businesses have historically been underutilized in Fort Worth and beyond. In fact, women-owned businesses have been so disadvantaged that the city, state and federal governments have passed laws and adopted rules to assist and incentivize women-owned businesses. Federal requirements adopted in 1994 set a goal of awarding 5% of annual federal contracts to women-owned businesses. In 2015 the federal government finally achieved its goal and awarded 5% of its $400 billion worth of yearly contracts to women-owned businesses.
Texas has similar types of state procurement goals. And at a local level, the city of Fort Worth has a robust program to incentivize women-owned businesses. City procurement processes and economic development agreements include goals to use women-owned businesses for between 15% and 25% of project costs depending on services.
The benefits of these laws are obvious. When the government sets rules to give advantages to certain groups, other groups are left out. Some may argue whether the government should set those rules in the first place. That’s outside the scope of this argument. The point here is if programs exist to benefit women-owned businesses, then it is economically advantageous to own a woman-owned business.
Women-owned business laws have always required businesses to prove the “owned” part of “woman-owned” but not the “woman” part. Since these laws don’t require women to prove they are women, it’s only a matter of time before men will identify as women to secure monetary advantages. By joining forces with LGBT groups to advance the transgender agenda, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce is undoing decades of women’s economic advancement. We call on the Fort Worth Chamber to stop waging war on women.
We Stand for Fort Worth, and we stand for women.