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Executive summary Governments can use public procurement to leverage the potential of women-owned businesses for their economies. The sooner governments invest in reforms and targeted assistance to increase access to public procurement, the sooner the benefits will flow to women, their families, their communities and their nations.
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his guide provides governments, procuring entities and other stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by women-owned businesses to participate in public procurement markets. It offers tools to address these challenges and stimulate increased entrepreneurial activity by women-owned businesses. Governments have long used public procurement as a tool to promote socioeconomic objectives. These objectives are sometimes referred to as ‘horizontal’ or ‘collateral’ because they are ancillary to the primary purpose of public procurement, which is to acquire goods and services for the government. Horizontal considerations in formulating public procurement policies are wide ranging, from promoting labour laws to encouraging local industrial development to supporting environmentally sustainable practices. To date, few governments have made a concerted effort to use public procurement as a tool to unleash the vast economic potential of women entrepreneurs.
Promoting gender equality is ‘smart economics’ The case for public procurement as a tool to promote participation by womenowned businesses is compelling from a developmental and economic perspective. A growing body of research shows that inclusive growth is critical to achieving many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the time of publication, a stand-alone goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment was proposed for the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which succeeds the MDGs. Research shows that there is a positive correlation between gender equality and a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. When women are excluded from the marketplace, the economy suffers. Promoting gender equality is, in the words of former World Bank President Robert Zoellick, ‘smart economics’. The same applies to promoting participation by women-owned businesses in public procurement.
Public procurement – a powerful tool Public procurement is a powerful tool to achieve socioeconomic objectives because it operates at the intersection of the government’s regulatory and buying powers. Governments are market regulators and market participants. They regulate the public procurement process by establishing the legal and regulatory framework. Governments spend trillions of dollars annually purchasing the goods, works and services they require to fulfil their public functions.