Clauses · FAR · Small business, labor and socioeconomic · provision
FAR 52.204-5 Women-Owned Business (Other Than Small Business)
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No mandate exists: 4.607(a) directs the contracting officer to put the provision in a Government solicitation, and the provision has no subcontracts paragraph. Primes replicate it inside their own reps & certs package because the same demographic data feeds their subcontracting-plan reporting under 52.219-9 (ISR/SSR in eSRS counts women-owned small business dollars) and because it is one line in a form they already send. bae-usgova (Mar 2025) lists it flat in a flow-down table with no applicability note; lmi-applieddna (2011) reproduces the full text inside "SECTION II" of its reps & certs, which is the honest placement
A clause can reach your subcontract without a mandate. Once it is in your document, it is a contract term all the same. The missing mandate is a fact about the regulation. It is not a ruling on your order.
Checked against acquisition.gov on 2026-08-05 · edition Oct 2014 · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
One item for your checklist.
Something you fill in and send back
Hours, once you know which one is missing.
- FAR 52.204-5(b)
The women-owned business representation — 51 percent ownership by one or more women and control of management and daily operations by one or more women, both halves
Owed when you are a women-owned business concern and have not already represented yourself as a small business concern in FAR 52.219-1(c)(1)
When it is used
A solicitation provision, prescribed at FAR 4.607(a) for all solicitations that (1) are NOT set aside for small business concerns, (2) exceed the simplified acquisition threshold ($350k since 2025-10-01), and (3) are for contracts to be performed in the United States or its outlying areas. Its own paragraph (b) narrows it further: "Complete only if the offeror is a women-owned business concern and has not represented itself as a small business concern in paragraph (c)(1) of FAR 52.219-1". Both filters point the same way — the provision exists to capture women-owned firms that are too big to be small businesses. For WhatBinds's buyer, a small business, its own paragraph (b) leaves nothing to complete.
Read closely
Nothing is filed with the Small Business Administration: there is no application, no certificate and no annual renewal, unlike the women-owned small business program under 13 CFR 127. Ownership and control evidence is what the answer stands on once FAR 52.204-19 makes it a contract term.
The 1 template that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.204-5 and FAR 4.607(a) (verified 2026-08-05)
This is research, not legal advice. It states what the regulation says about this clause and cites the paragraph behind it. It does not rule on your order, and it does not rule on whether a prime's markings are correct.