Public comments close July 23, 2026
Make sure women-owned businesses are heard.
The proposed FAR Overhaul would reduce the visibility, the mandatory consideration, and even the named program that women-owned small businesses depend on to find and win federal work. It takes just a few minutes to be counted.
What’s happening
The Federal Acquisition Regulation — the rulebook for how every federal agency buys — is getting its biggest rewrite in 40 years. For women-owned small businesses, the stakes are specific: the proposed rules would shrink the public notices that help you find work, remove required consideration from the channel that carries most women-owned dollars, and strip the WOSB program’s name from the rules that publicize opportunities. Over a thousand pages, and a single short window to respond.
Listen to the case
Audio briefing
New Rules Sideline Women-Owned Small Businesses
How the proposed rules pull visibility, mandatory consideration, and the program’s own name away from women-owned firms — drawn from USWCC’s filed comments and disparity study. Put it on for the commute.
Why it matters to women-owned firms
- The entry point gets harder to see. Smaller opportunities — the band where women-owned firms typically win their first federal work — would still be posted, but the guaranteed 15-day head start before the solicitation disappears.
- Protection is pulled from where the money is. 73% of women-owned small business dollars arrive through task and delivery orders — and required small-business consideration is removed from exactly that channel.
- The program loses its name. References to the WOSB program are replaced with generic language — and a program the regulation stops naming is a program contracting officers stop steering to.
- An overnight cliff for subcontractors. Primes could only count SBA-certified women-owned subcontractors toward their goals, effective immediately — veteran-owned firms got a full year to transition; women-owned firms get none.
You’re not starting from scratch
USWCC has already filed detailed comments in both dockets — backed by a full disparity study of the government’s own contracting data, industry by industry, showing women-owned firms substantially underutilized in roughly four of every five measured markets. You don’t have to make the legal or statistical case. Just tell the government what these changes would mean for your business, in your own words.
Read USWCC’s filed comments:
Principal comment on the FAR Overhaul (with the USWCC Disparity Study as Exhibit A) — read the PDF · posting to Regulations.gov shortly
Regulatory Flexibility Act (§610) comment — read the PDF · posting to Regulations.gov shortly
What you can do
1. File your own public comment. Regulators must read and respond to substantive comments — and the first round of public input already moved them. Your real experience as a woman business owner is evidence the record doesn’t have and the government didn’t gather.
2. Tell your members of Congress where you stand. A short note to your representative and senators adds weight to the record.
How it works
Our free Member Action Tool makes it quick:
- Enter your basics and pick your firm’s stage.
- Build your comment in your own words — we’ll surface the topics that fit you, including the ones specific to WOSB and EDWOSB firms.
- Copy it, file in both dockets on Regulations.gov, and reach your members of Congress.
Your endorsement of USWCC’s filed comments is added for you automatically.
What makes a strong comment
- Use your own words. A thousand identical letters count as one; a thousand real stories count as a thousand.
- Be specific. Your firm, your city, your size, your certification, and roughly what share of your revenue is federal.
- Tell one true story. Half a page of truth beats ten pages of anything else.
Be seen. Be heard. Be counted.
Congress set a five-percent goal for women-owned small business contracting more than thirty years ago. It has been met twice. These rules would move the marketplace further from it — unless women business owners put their experience on the record now.
Deadline: July 23, 2026. It takes minutes.
This is an independent advocacy effort of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce. The tool helps you file your own comment — it does not submit anything on your behalf.
Make Your Voice Count
Start here
We use the information requested below to set up your comment and your letters.
The government is rewriting the rules of the federal marketplace — the Federal Acquisition Regulation — in the biggest overhaul since 1984. The proposed rules would change how opportunities get posted, whether agencies must consider small businesses at each step, and how the work you compete for reaches the market.
Commenting works. The first round drew about 1,600 comments, and the government changed course on several major provisions. What the record needs now is what only you can supply: real facts from real small businesses. The government's own small-business impact analysis is thin — your comment is the evidence it didn't gather.
The golden rules
- Write in your own words. A thousand identical letters count as one comment; a thousand real stories count as a thousand pieces of evidence.
- Be specific. Your company, city/state, industry, headcount, roughly what share of your revenue is federal.
- Tell one story. Pick one or two topics you've actually lived. Half a page of truth beats ten pages of anything else.
- Only true, verifiable facts. Every real story strengthens the record; anything exaggerated weakens all of us.
- Support, don't attach. Your comment closes with a one-line statement of support — the tool adds it for you, so there's no need to paste the full filing.
What the proposed rules would change
Finding the work
Task orders & big vehicles
Growing past small
The people & process that open doors
1 · Which of these sounds like your firm?
Click to pick one — we'll surface the topics that fit you best. You can always open all of them.
2 · Draft your comment
We'll set up your name and firm — you write the story. Click the Build my draft button to start. Your one-line statement of support gets added automatically when you copy for each docket below.
3 · File it in both dockets
For each docket, click Copy for this docket — this copies your finished comment (with your support line) to your clipboard. Then click Comment now → to open that docket on Regulations.gov, paste your comment into the comment box, scroll down to fill in the short form, and submit. Then do the same for the second docket, starting again with Copy for this docket under FAR Case 2026-005. Each one takes just a few minutes.
Next: tell your members of Congress where you stand.
Find your representatives
This is the one step that needs your street address — it's how we match you to your House district and senators.