One in three small and medium enterprises are owned by women. Why aren’t they getting their fair share of government contracts?

Women are excelling in business. According to the World Bank, women-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute 20% to the global gross domestic product. Despite the growth of women’s entrepreneurship, the number of businesses getting government contracts is much lower. For example, women-owned companies get only 5% of federal contracts in the US and 17% in Ukraine. When an intersectional lens is applied, factors such as race, disability, and geography further limit access to public procurement by women-led businesses.

This just isn’t good enough. Women’s participation in public procurement as users, planners, and suppliers is critical for the creation and monitoring of effective public services. Boosting women’s businesses can create jobs, and inject the market with new ideas and competition.

Lack of access to information, complex procedures and bias create barriers for women entrepreneurs, as well as under-represented groups.

A successful gender-responsive procurement strategy should consider:

1. Including the perspectives and needs of women and girls in the planning, award, and management of public contracts.
2. Outreach and communication with the business community includes a diversity of women-led businesses.
3. Collecting and monitoring data about the rates of participation of women-led businesses in public procurement to monitor progress and identify gaps and barriers.
4. Identifying and removing barriers to women-led businesses access to the public procurement market by ensuring transparency, simplified procedures, access to credit, prompt payment, among other needed reforms.

Ukraine: gender-responsive public investment management

Working with UN Women, OCP is undertaking a global review of best practices and lessons learned in gender responsive public investment management. We are pairing these insights with an analysis of the current practices regarding gender in Ukraine and identifying practical recommendations to improve meaningful consideration of gender dimensions of public investment management in the reconstruction of Ukraine through the OCP-implemented DREAM public investment management system.

East Africa: promoting gender-responsive public procurement

In 2023, OCP supported the Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) to carry out an IDRC-funded action research program on gender and public procurement in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda to identify the barriers preventing women-led businesses from accessing public procurement opportunities. Combining policy analysis, data, and engagement with governments, businesses, and civil society, the project generated practical recommendations to strengthen gender-responsive procurement policies, improve the collection and use of gender-disaggregated procurement data, and expand economic opportunities for women entrepreneurs. The research is helping governments build more inclusive procurement systems that enable women-led businesses to compete, win, and deliver public contracts.

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In Colombia, the COVID-19 pandemic led to higher unemployment for women highlighting the need for gender-responsive economic policies. In October 2020, a Presidential directive was issued to empower women in part through a new entrepreneurial law focused on public procurement. To monitor the situation, Colombia Compra Eficiente began publishing sex-disaggregated data about their contract awards using the Open Contracting Data Standard. The agency is using data to analyze the differences in women’s participation by sector, region and value of contracts. In terms of total value, 18% contracts were awarded to women-led businesses in 2020 (while only representing up to 56% of the supplier base). OCP, UN Women, and the British Prosperity Programme are supporting Colombia to implement guidelines for public procurement officials to incorporate gender-responsive procurement and support women-led businesses to apply for opportunities. Pilots are ongoing in both urban and rural areas.