the purpose of this guide is to provide corporations with a better understanding of the barriers and challenges preventing womenowned businesses from accessing and fully participating in the corporate supply chain it also provides tools and techniques for overcoming these barriers and leveraging the vast untapped economic potential represented by womenowned businesses to put this in perspective about percent of the top global economic entities are corporations and not countries based on annual revenue or gross domestic product as the case may be white each year corporations spend trillions of dollars acquiring goods and servicesyet purchases from womenowned businesses account for a merei percent of the total spend vazquez sherman p by overlooking womenowned businesses corporations are missing an opportunity to expand their markets diversify their supply chains and grow the economy while simultaneously improving the lives of women and girls around the globe