A WBE is a Woman Business Enterprise and an MBE is a Minority Business Enterprise. To get the certification, a business must be 51% OWNED AND OPERATED by either a woman or an ethnic minority. A woman is not considered a minority when applying for MBE status, in this case minority means an ethnic minority such as Asian American, African American, Hispanic or Native American.
There are many organizations that will help small businesses with the process of getting certified as there is a fair amount of paperwork involved. The benefits of getting MBE or WBE certification is that then a business is qualified to bid on contracts where it stipulates that a certain percentage of business must go to women and minority owned firms.
A good website to get started on the certification process is
http://www.orvwbc.org.