In my still brief construction and engineering career I’ve worked for two companies that qualify for Minority Business Enterprise which is defined as a company that is at least 51% owned by a minority. Minorities of course include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, but somewhat interestingly minorities also include women.
Both companies were majority owned by women. The first firm was an engineering consulting company that was of course started by a husband and wife but placed in the name of the wife. This is a bit sneaky, but the owner was very well educated and experienced in this line of consulting and certainly qualified to run a company of this type. The work we put out was exceptional and I have no problem with them reaping the benefits of minority business requirements on public projects.
The second company however was a steel contractor that was also started by a husband and wife. However, in this case the wife did little more than sign the occasional check – the company was entirely run by the husband. While they did good work, this is a gross exploitation of a system that should arguably not be in place at all.
Regardless of your beliefs on women being included in minority owned businesses, let’s be clear about one thing: women are not a minority. In fact, women could very well be in the majority in this country as far as population is concerned. However, we all know that the term minority in this situation should really be disadvantaged because it has nothing to do with percentages but has to do with overall advancement of a particular demographic. So let’s be clear about something else: women are not disadvantaged.
Women will consistently have better test and academic scores than men, and while I’ve heard countless testimonies about how salaries of women are significantly lower than that of men, I know for a fact that this is not the case in the world of engineering and construction and could very well be exaggerated outside of the AEC industry. Even people publishing the statistics of salaries for men vs. women will acknowledge that engineering and construction does not have a disparity of income. But really, the reason I know this is because I’ve worked with and gone to school with several women and I know what they make. I wish I had a job, let alone the salary my female colleagues are raking in. And yes, they are all employed.
I think constantly about going out on my own and trying to start some kind of company, but something holds me back and I think the biggest issue is that I don’t know what my advantage will be in the market. How can I compete when there is a large portion of public work for which I am not even eligible?
I would like to note, that I am very much in favor of mandated minority business requirement on public jobs. I think it encourages minorities that may have grown up on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum to go out and make a difference. But lets make sure that these folks are in fact disadvantaged.
Perhaps I’m overreacting (I think I’ve said that before in this blog), and if I went out my own I would be able to compete fairly for work, but it almost seems that in order to start a company or get your foot in the door, it requires some kind of competitive advantage and in the AEC industry, people at every firm are doing pretty much the same thing, so I wonder: what’s my advantage? Will a quirky blog that gives moderately substantiated rhetoric on the industry push me to the top?
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