While some technology companies hope that outside forces will narrow the gender gap over time, others believe they can do it for themselves with hard numbers and stiff deadlines.

Women hold 25 percent of computing jobs, according to the National Center for Women & Technology. Despite this obvious gender gap, 58 percent of men and 46 percent of women in technology believe there are enough women in leadership roles, a survey from Comparably found. Perhaps they’d defend their company cultures as fair and argue reasonably that they can’t force women up the ladder to achieve parity. However, setting goals for greater female representation and measuring progress can make a difference, according to Alicia Johnson (pictured), managing director at Accenture PLC.

“We want a 50 percent women workforce by 2025,” Johnson said.

This is not just a private pact among a few elites within Accenture. The company has publicly announced its 50/50 by 2025 goal. It plans to achieve it by making a number of changes internally to hit specific targets. It will keep score on these initiatives with clear-cut metrics, and it will make those metrics publicly available. Accenture publishes its workforce demographics across many countries, including the USA Canada, South Africa, Japan and India.

“We also challenge other organizations to come out and publish their workforce demographics,” Johnson told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this week’s Veritas Vision conference in Las Vegas. (* Disclosure below.)

Accenture is partnered with data management company Veritas Technologies LLC, and Johnson was on hand at the conference for the company’s Women at Vision Empowered, or WAVE, event. WAVE offers networking, workshops and panels to help advance women in technology. “And we encourage men to also join us in these WAVE events,” she said.

This week, theCUBE spotlights Alicia Johnson in our Women in Tech feature.

VCs and founders of a feather

Transparency within Accenture and also in its dealings with the public will keep everyone involved in the 50/50 initiative accountable, according to Johnson. “We have set that transparency goal across not only sponsoring women in P&L goals, but coming forward and making that commitment to transparency by publicly making the announcement,” she said.

Some of the metrics Accenture will be collecting revolve around hiring and promoting women within the company. Some new initiatives focus intensely on “high-demand, short-supply, high-performing women in technical architect roles,” Johnson said.

Accenture is invested in boosting women in tech in several key areas. Venture capital funding is another area with a very wide gender gap. In 2016, 83 percent of global VC deals funded male-founded companies, according to venture capital database PitchBook. The gender gap among the funded might trace directly back to the VCs themselves, according to Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures: “Women who have more numbers on the investment team invest in more women,” Lee told Pitchbook, citing her own firm’s portfolio as an example.

And, according to Johnson, “We’re really interested in helping set that gender parity as well so that more VC money goes out toward women and women investments and women VCs.”

Perception or reality?

The gender gap in leadership exists in part because of the attitudes of both men and women, according to Johnson. “In the work world, you often see if a woman is assertive, she’s referred to in a negative tone,” Johnson said.

A 2014 survey from Fortune.com revealed bias in performance reviews at technology companies of various sizes. Reviewers described similar behavior as assertive in men, but abrasive in women, the study found. (It would be an interesting exercise to square these results with fired Google employee James Damore’s statement that women’s “extroversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness” contributes to the gap.)

“Often times, you’ll find women — the higher-powered they are in organizations — they’re not looked upon as being friendly individuals,” Johnson said. Does this perception reflect reality? Or is it an unconscious prejudice keeping women out of leadership roles? “These are the questions we need to start asking […] is there a reason for that?”

Johnson’s own realm within Accenture — Accenture Operations — implements technology to digitize and automate business processes. At the end of the fiscal year 2017, its staff was 45.9 percent female, Johnson stated. It — and Accenture as a whole — will hit 50 percent women by 2025 or sooner, Johnson hopes. The goal is not simply parity for its own sake, but ultimately improved business across the board.

“You are actually more successful as an organization by having women lead, often times, in a scenario where sometimes men have been, typically, the leaders,” Johnson concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Veritas Vision 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Veritas Vision 2017. Neither Veritas Technologies LLC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE