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National Women’s Small Business Month & H.R. 5050
This month is National Women’s Small Business Month and we are proud to celebrate and honor the nearly 11 million woman-owned businesses in the U.S., which is 38 percent of all businesses, supporting nearly nine million jobs and generating annual revenues of $1.6 trillion. Women business owners are a force of nature!
It is no surprise that National Women’s Business Month coincides with the passage of the historic H.R. 5050, The Women’s Business Ownership Act, and signed into law by President Reagan in 1988. The Act was created to address the needs of women in business by giving women entrepreneurs better recognition, additional resources, and by eliminating discriminatory lending practices by banks that favored male business owners over female.
Two crucial pieces of H.R. 5050: One it, required that the U.S. Census Bureau include C corporations when presenting data on women-owned firms. Prior to the inclusion of this data, statistics for women business owners were not accurate and diminished the vital contribution women were making in the business world. And two, eliminated all individual state laws that required women to have a male relative sign a business loan.
NASE is proud and honored to celebrate the 30th anniversary of H.R. 5050 and we look forward to supporting initiatives that highlight the importance of all entrepreneurs and the significant contributions they make to their communities and country!