Page 6 The Portland Observer—January 15, 1991
Separate and Unequal
Automatic presumptions, subjective interpretations: Women business owners charge
gender discrimination in federal DBE programs.
BY JEANIE M. BARNETT
(Reprinted with permission o f
Minority Business Enterprise Maga­
zine)
Take a look at most any minority
and women business development pro­
gram in the nation: Chances are, where
there are separate goals, women get the
sm aller share.
In an era when female entrepre­
neurs are staring businesses at one-and-
a-half tim es the rate o f m en-w hen, by
the turn o f the century, women are
expected to own nearly 40 percent of
all U.S. businesses-women owned firms
still account for only 14 percent of
business receipts. W omen owned firms
receive less than one percent of gov­
ernm ent contracts. Even women busi­
ness ow ners who have been around for
15 or 20 years still refer to discrim ina­
tion they face daily because of their
sex: In obtaining credit, in winning a
contract, or m ust getting a foot in the
door. And some are now charging that
federal program s designed to assist
women business ow ners are inherently
discrim inatory.
Central to the argum ent is the U.S.
D epartm ent o f Transportation ’ s (DOT)
Disadvantaged Business Enterprise
(DBE) program. Nineteen eighty-seven
marked the first tim e in history that a
federally m andated set aside program
was created for women when Congress
included female business ow ners as
disadvantaged in DOT;s 10 percent goal,
which represents over one billion dol­
lars annually in federally funded high­
way and transit projects. Under the
original program , which was enacted
in 1982 by the Surface Transportation
A ssistance Act, women were not con­
sidered in the overall 10 percent set
aside; the legislation left it up to the
states and local agencies to establish
their own “ good faith” W BE goals. At
least several states and num erous agen­
cies had no W BE goals at all.
Now, in the four years since women
have participated as DBEs in federal
highway and transit set asides, an in­
creasing num ber o f those firms have
either lost their certification or cannot
gel certified because o f the way the
federal DBE regulations are interpreted
by individual state and local agencies.
“ It is a proven fact that women
who are certified in the DBE program
are scrutinized much more closely than
their minority counter parts,” states
Joanne Payne, president o f the National
W omen Business Enterprise A ssocia­
tion (N W BEA ), a Little Rock, A rkan­
sas-based trade association represent­
ing about 133 women owned construc­
tion firms in 43 states. A tenacious
advocate of DOT;s com bined goal who
lobbied extensively for the inclusion of
women in the federal set aside law,
Payne claim s that decertification of
female DBEs since the new goal look
effect has “ skyrocketed” by an aver­
age of 30 to 60 percent.
The 1987 am endm ent to D O T’S
DBE program states that women, “ like
black Am ericans, Hispanic Americans,
and other groups currently designated
in the regulations, are presumed to be
socially and econom ically disadvan­
taged individuals.” (Section 106 (c) (2)
(B) of the Surface Transportation and
Uniform Relocation A ssistance Act of
1987.)But Payne contends that those
who do the certifying are subjecting
women to a “ double standard” in de­
termining their status as a disadvan­
taged business. Payne accuses DOT of
practicing “ Jane Crow ” regulations in
their “ separate and unequal” treatment
o f women business owners.
For instance, to become certified
as a DBE, a woman owned business
cannot have used as start-up capital any
monetary gift from a non-minority male,
either through inheritance or the trans­
fer o f stock. A female enterprise is not
considered independent if any loan was
cosigned by a male. A company is
considered in noncom pliance if a fe­
male owner has a son or husband on her
com pany’s board o f directors, or if she
calls her business “ family ow ned,” or
if the com pany was started with her and
her husband’s joint funds. W ho really
controls her company is questioned if
any male em ployees receive a higher
salary than she docs, or if she hires a
male w orker who has more technical
Oregon Seeks Teen Queen
A pplications are now being
accepted for girls who are interested in
participating in the eighth annual Miss
Oregon A merican Coed Pageant which
will be held at the Portland Hilton in
Portland May 2 4 ,2 5 and 26, 1991. The
pageant has four age divisions. Coeds
16-19, Teens 13-15, Pre-Teens 8-12 and
Princesses who are 4-7 years old.
T he winners will receive cash
aw ards and trophies as well as the right
to represent the state at their national
pageant. The Teen, Pre-Teen and Prin­
cess N ational Pageants will take place at
the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Tampa, Flor­
ida. The contestants also will visit W alt
Disney W orld in Orlando, Florida. The
Coed N ational Pageant will take place
at the H yatt Regency W aikiki in H on­
olulu, Hawaii.
The reigning Miss Oregon
A merican Coed is Inger Ness o f Eugene
and her Hostess is Jacqulyn McDougal
o f Lebanon. O regon’s Pre-Teen queen
is Misty Merrill of Seaside and her Hostess
Loretta Picard of Pendleton. Mili W ilk­
inson is Oregon’s Princess and her Hostess
is Andrea Clark both o f Grants Pass. The
reigning M iss American Coed is R e­
becca Packard o f Texas.
The reigning Miss American
Teen is Christina Hacker o f Maryland.
Trisha Stephenson o f South Carolina
and Kathy W atkins o f Alabama are the
reigning National Pre-Teen Queen and
Princess.
For an application and further
information write or call: American Coed
Pageant, 3775 Emma Lane, Vista, CA
92084, (619) 727-9624.
Black Strike Succeeds
If M artin w ere alive today, he
would have been speaking, organizing
and m arching with the Delta Pride
w orkers o f Indianola, M ississippi. The
900 catfish production w orkers o f Delta
Pride are alm ost all African American
and m ostly women. They went on
strike against some of the most pow er­
ful forces in the South, rich white for­
m er planters, and won.
Dr. Joseph Lowry, president
o f the Southern Christian Leadership
C onference, said that "God may have
chosen Indianola in the '90s, ju st as he
chose Birm ingham and Selma in the
’60s, to be the watershed that turns this
country around...this struggle may be
the flagship for the rest of the nation in
the struggle for econom ic justice for
blacks."
Although Indianola may be the
turning point, there are clearly many
battle ahead. Large sectors o f the labor
force in the South remain to be organ­
ized. Those sectors which are predom i­
nantly Black and female, am ong poul­
try w orkers, in rice production, and in
the growing service sector, are opening
up to unionization. These coming
stru g g lc s-in conjunction with the o n ­
going m ovem ents for civil and human
rig h ts-m a y well make the South the
critical battleground for dem ocracy and
justice in the 1990s.___________ _____
The struggle for a decent un­
ion contract tied together issues o f civil
rights, workers rights, and human rights.
It touched people o f conscience all over
the nation. S upportcam enotonly from
the labor m ovem ent but also from the
Congressional Black Caucus, churches,
com m unity organizations, and the civil
rights community.
In late D ecem ber, the com ­
pany settled. The union said the con­
tract had "equal protions o f dignity and
dollars that signals the dawn o f a new
era for workers in the Mississippi Delta."
The new agreem ent at Delta Pride in­
cludes job classification upgrades, an
im m ediate average wage increase of
about 75 cents per hour, more vacation
time, a jo in t labor-m anagem ent safety
com m ittee, an additional paid holiday,
im proved grievance procedures and big
part of the "portion of dignity"-unlim -
ited bathroom privileges.
The politics o f this country
will never be changed until the politics
of the South are changed. The advances
in African-American political em pow ­
erm ent, made possible by the Voting
Rights Act, have already forced a sig­
nificant shift in representation. Further
shifts can be made with a larger and
more effective organized labor move-
mciii
' ’•"¡in, allv active.
"T h e emergency we now face is economic, and it isa desperateand
worsening situation...'This is no time for apathy or complacency.
This is a lim e for vigorous and positive action," saijl King.
expertise as a field manager, supervi­
sor or estimator.
“ Decertification based on employ­
ing relatives only applies to white
w om en,” says Payne. M inorities, in
contrast, are not faced with this prob­
lem, because generally, the relatives
they employ arc also m inorities. Nor is
a male business ow ner, regardless of
race, ever questioned about who is in
control should his wife or other family
members happen to be employees.
“ There is the automatic presum p­
tion on the part of people doing the cer­
tification that if there is any [non-m i­
nority] male who is part owner o f the
company, or even a field supervisor,
that the woman can ’t possibly run the
com pany,” agrees Deborah W ilder, a
San Francisco attorney and former
executive director o f the California
Chapter o f W omen Construction O w n­
ers and Executives (W COE)who spe­
cializes in WBE certification cases.
“ I’m not sure that it’s even a conscious
thought, but it may be societal.”
W ilder points out that running a
business * ‘does not mean just perform ­
ing in th field, but also dealing with
contracts, estimating, bank loans, and
everything else in between. “ But those
who do the certifying, especially when
it com es to construction firms, w ant to
see women owners “ in the field, riding
a machine, wearing jeans and getting
grubby,” says Wilder. “ But how do
you run an effective business if you’re
always out in the field?”
NWBEA’s Payne says women face
another “ C atch-22” in the certifica­
tion process: Lack of experience. The
language of the law presumes that re­
gardless of their race, women, like
minorities, are socially an econom i­
cally disadvantaged as a result o f his­
toric discrimination, which barred them
because o f their sex from entering the
construction trades to gain the needed
expertise to run a business from the
wheel of a bulldozer.
But any business person under­
stands that technicians, m ore often than
not, do n ’t make good m anagers, and
vice versa. Both Payne and W ilder con­
tend that a minority who hires those
who have more technical experience
than he, is not automatically held sus­
pect as a front; a white women who
docs the same, on the other hand , is.
In many jurisdictions, women arc
now being required to docum ent spe­
cific instances of discrimination in order
to justify their status as “ socially and
economically disadvantaged.” Just as
many jurisdictions have been compelled
to conduct disparity studies, following
the U.S. Supreme C ourt’s historic
Richmond v. Croson decision nearly
two years ago, to prove that discrim ina­
tion is not simply fanciful or self-serv­
ing paranoia, women business owners
must now present their own personal
“ disparity study” before being consid­
ered in the DBE certification process.
The only difference is, notes W ilder,
many W B Escan neitherafford the time
nor the expense o f such a task. M inor­
ity business owners, on the other hand,
face no such requirem ent for docum en­
tation.
Many in the minority business
community balked when DOT im ple­
mented its hom ogenized set aside. C rit­
ics o f the revised program argued that
by elim inating the separate W BE goal,
minority business ow ners would be
forced to compete for few er contracts
against many more firms, and that less
dollars would flow into the minority
community, diluting the original intent
of the legislation.
In Illinois, for instance, federal high­
way construction contracts to women
owned firms since 1987 have more
than doubled, while contracts to m i­
norities dropped by alm ost half, during
a period when total highway spending
in the state decreased by 10 percent. A
Septem ber 1989 Chicago Reporter ar­
ticle, “ Blacks Lose to W omen in ‘C on­
struction G am e,” reported that on the
$210 million renovation o f the Dan
Ryan Expressway in Chicago -which
has die fourth largest concentration of
women owned businesses o f any major
U.S. city-women received alm ost 75
percent of DBE contracts through 1988,
and alm ost 70 percent in 1989.
Those numbers raised the ire o f the
local minority community. Then-Mayor
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were 6 1 ,6 6 5 women ow ned construc­
tion firm s,com pared to ato tal o f 62,1 11
minority owned firms. In transporta­
tion related businesses, women ow ned
firms numbered 40,596; those run by
minorities, 44,858.
But the numbers could well be
used to support the contention that
women are gaining at the expense o f
m inorities. The Census Bureau, which
com piles statistics on business ow ner­
ship every five years, has released re­
ports on businesses owned by women
and those by blacks for 1987, the last
year
fo r
w h ich
d a ta
w as
collected.(Statistical profiles on H is­
panic and Asian owned businesses will
be available sometime next year.)
Between 1982 and 1987, the num ­
ber o f women ow ned construction
com panies increased by 38 percent, to
94,308, which was slightly less than the
39 percent increase in black construc­
tion firm s (numbering 36,763). But in
the area o f transportation and public
utilities during the same lime period,
women owned firms increased a w hop­
ping 90 percent, to 76,968, com pared
to a 51 percent increase in black ow ned
firms (to 36,958).
Payne and other women business
advocates are also calling for the inclu­
sion o f women in the D epartm ent o f
Defense’s five percent DBE goal, which
defines disadvantaged in terms o f race
and ethnicity, and the SB A ’s 8(a) set
aside program. O f the approxim ately
3,500 8(a)-certified firms, only seven
percent are owned by women, o f whom
10 are white, according to Payne’s
calculations (the SBA docum ents
ow nership o f 8(a) firms only by race,
not gender).
Payne says her organization is now
seeking a grant to conduct a study ,to
dem onstrate that women are by defini­
tion socially and econom ically disad­
vantaged because o f their gender. A d­
ditionally , she hints that NW BEA is
preparing to file a sex discrim ination
suit against several federal and state
agencies. Says Payne: “ It’s long over­
due.”
Eugene Sawyer threatened to shut down
the project if m inorities didn’t start
receiving a greater share o f contracts.
Illinois Congressm an G us Savage (D)
introduced legislation calling for a re­
turn to separate goals and guaranteeing
that m inorities would receive at least
tw o-thirds of DBE set aside contracts.
O bserving that w hitecontractors would
rather do business with women than
m inorities, one black Chicago politi­
cian rem arked that the com bined goal
represented “ the em asculation o f the
civil rights m ovem ent.”
C ritics also charged that the com ­
bined goal encourages “ fronting,” by
which a white male business ow ner
transfers, on paper only, 51 percent
ow nership o f his com pany to a daugh­
ter or w ife in order to becom e eligible
as a disadvantaged business and com ­
pete for set aside contracts.
But Payne says that perception is
discrim inatory especially against white
women, “ who are assum ed to be fronts
more than any other group.” It also fos­
ters an attitude that women arc som e­
how being used by white contractors to
destroy minority set asides.
“ W e have never said that women
should be included at the detrim ent of
minority businesses” insists Payne.
“ W om en deserve to be part o f the
program ...because women have been
and continue to be socially and eco­
nom ically discrim inated against.”
It is expected that when the new
highw ay authorization bill com es be­
fore the next session o f Congress, a
return to separate M BE and W BE goals
will be a pressing issue. Payne says that
only if they arc also equal will she and
her group support separate goals; if not,
Payne believes in leaving the DBE goal
as is. W hile W CO E has supported a
return to separate goals as in the past,
the group now also supports equalizing
the goals.
The num bers, at least unto them ­
selves, support such a move. In con­
struction for instance, m inorities and
women ow ned roughly the same num ­
ber o f construction com panies in 1982,
according to the latest available U.S.
Census Bureau statistics. In 1982, there
Portland, Or. 97232
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Celebration
Commemorates
Bill of Rights
Guest speakers, special forums,
mock trials and field trips arc among
activities planned at West Sylvan Middle
School, 8111 S.W. W est Slope Dr., to
celebrate the bicentennial o f the U.S.
Bill o f Rights.
The week-long celebration
begins Jan. 14 and culm inates with an
all-school assembly Friday (Jan. 18) at
9 a.m . featuring local new scaster Lew
Frederick. Frederick will speak to stu­
dents about the importance of the Bill
of Rights and its relationship to the
work of Dr. Martin Luther K ing and the
civil rights movement.
Each year W est Sylvan devel­
ops a schoolwidc focus on a special
topic which touches all areas o f the cur­
riculum. This year’s focus is designed
to make the Bill o f Rights relevant to
students and to help students becom e
active and responsible participants in a
democratic society, according to prin­
cipal Peter Hamilton.
“ W cstSylvan’scelcbrationof
the bicentennial o f the Bill of Rights
will give students an important civic
foundation and insight into contem po­
rary issues,” Hamilton said.
Place your advertisement in the
Portland Observer
,■ •,
Office# (503) 288-0033
Fax# (503) 288-0015
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