WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS CAN BE 8a CERTIFIED - YOU CAN NOW BE CERTAIN OF IT BEFORE YOU APPLY.

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By almost any measure, women-owned businesses are on the move, growing in total numbers faster than any other demographic sector, expanding in their diversity, well beyond the classical women-centric business niches, and achieving sales revenues that would even make Jack Welch envious.

Why then are these same women-owned businesses still severely underrepresented in one of the Federal government’s most sought out and lucrative contracting assistance initiatives, the 8(a) Business Development Program?  Today, for example out of the more than 81,000 woman-owned businesses that are currently registered in the Federal government’s Central Contractor Registration Data Base, there are less than 1000 ( about 1%) 8(a) certified firms that are owned by non-minority women.

More to the point, why aren’t you 8(a) certified?

We at EZCertify have spoken to thousands of small businesses, including hundreds of women-owned businesses asking them this same question. What we discovered is that the "myths" surrounding the 8(a) program and the level of misinformation about doing business with the Federal government are both monumental and widespread. What is even a more unfortunate situation is that many of these women have shared with me that they have been discouraged to apply for participation in this program by SBA officials, the Federal agency with the mission to expand Federal contracting opportunities for women-owned businesses.

Moreover, women business owners generally, and non-minority women business owners in particular, simply don’t believe that they can prove that they have experienced "gender discrimination" sometime during their lives, which is a basic eligibility requirement for you to be 8(a) certified. 

What if I told you that most women business owners in the United States today, have suffered and continue to suffer from severe and chronic gender discrimination, that has had and continues to have a negative effect on their education, work experience, business success, and economic well-being?

Don’t believe this to be true?  Let’s look at some incidents that could rise to the level of gender discrimination required by the SBA to be 8(a) certified...

• Have you ever been denied access to a class or course during your school years because you were told that these classes were meant for "boys"?
  Have you ever failed to receive the same "on-the-job training" as your male counterparts simply because management thought that after training you, you would just go off, get married and "start a family"?
• Have you ever been paid less for doing the same work as any of your male colleagues, despite the fact that your education and experience were equivalent to theirs?
• Were you ever denied a "well-earned promotion" only to discover that your employer didn’t think that a woman supervisor could lead other men?
• Have you ever been denied access to a "decision-maker" and found out that he wouldn’t waste his time talking to a woman who "shouldn’t be in this defense business anyhow"?
• Were you ever exposed to a work environment where meetings, decisions, and presentations were conducted in such places as bars, hotel rooms, or during weekend golf outings with the "boys"?
• Did a banker ever ask you to bring your husband along to discuss a loan, despite the fact that you explained to him that your husband is not involved in the business, or that you are not even married?
• Have you ever been asked to "take it or leave it" during a contract negotiation, and told that "companies like yours" are just lucky to be considered at all?
• Have you ever found out that one of your male employees could "cut a better deal" than you, simply because your client said he could negotiate "real tough" with a woman?
• Have you ever lost a job during your work career because of an "alleged RIF", only to be replaced by a higher-paid male, with even less qualifications than you?

If you could answer yes to any one of the above questions, or if you have another incident that occurred sometime in your life, that you "think" might have constituted gender discrimination, then you owe it to yourself and your business to call us at EZCertify, toll free at 1-866-681-4970, and talk to one of 8(a) certification experts.  We’ll give you a candid evaluation of your chances of being 8(a) certified, at no obligation to you.

In hundreds of discussions with women business owners, we have also heard that they could not prove conclusively that an incident that they truly believed was a bona-fide case of gender discrimination, ever happened.  We and more importantly the SBA, realize that most victims of discrimination are not going to have the "pictures" or "sound recordings" of these unfortunate incidents.  We also realize that these experiences are not among the most favorably recalled, in a woman business owner’s memory.  That’s why, we at EZCertify have developed a unique process to assist our clients to recall these incidents, by having available real-life examples from hundreds of other cases of discrimination (a sort of rogues gallery of gender discrimination), in order to stimulate our client’s memories to say, "Hey, the same or a similar incident happened to me". 

We also hear from women business owners that they could never produce the type of evidence, required by the SBA.  First of all, the idea that you have to provide conclusive evidence is also a myth.  While conclusive evidence would be "nice-to-have", IT IS NOT NECESSARY to prove gender discrimination.  Under an "evidentiary standard" termed, Preponderance of the Evidence, it is only necessary to show that what you are alleging is more likely to have happened than not.  We at EZCertify also coach you in the "forensics" of gender discrimination.  That is, we also stimulate our client’s memory, so that in most cases, they can produce, a letter from a former co-worker, a copy of pay records, clearly showing that males are higher paid than women in our client’s past, a record of the genders of companies doing business with a particular government agency, and tons of other forensic evidence that the SBA will consider to be "adequate" to prove discrimination.

Finally, we’ve also have heard that they and their witnesses are fearful of coming forward, because they are still doing business  with the person or organization that are the subject of their allegations, and they don’t want to jeopardize their current contracts, or generally, just wouldn’t want to be sued by anyone that they might implicate in their allegations.  Again, call us at 1-866-681-4970, and we’ll put your mind to rest about this concern, as well.

You see, women business owner can now be 8(a) certified and you can be fairly certain of it if you qualify, before you embark on the journey to being certified.

Curious about how we determine if you have a strong case for being certified? Call us at 1-866-681-4970 or submit our online form and we will personally tell you whether or not you could qualify to be 8(a) certified and join the hundreds of other women-owned businesses that we have assisted to become certified.