Back in May, four Google employees proposed 13 new female emojis to highlight diverse female careers and roles. Today, the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit group that approves new entries for the emoji keyboard, have not only agreed but added a female option to 33 existing emojis.
In a press release, Google said the four employees have worked closely with members of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee to bring the proposal to life. The four Google developers, Rachel Been, Nicole Bleuel, Agustin Fonts and Mark Davis, argued that the female emojis are overwhelmingly stereotypical- there’s a bride, nail painting, hair grooming, dancing and burlesque bunnies. The men however are cops, doctors and playing sports.
“We believe we can have a larger positive impact by adding 13 new emoji that depict women across a representative sample of professions. We believe this will empower young women (the heaviest emoji users), and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world.”
Today, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee has agreed to add 11 new professional emoji, in both male and female options and with all the skin tones. That’s more than 100 new emoji to choose from!
Unicode is also adding male and female versions to 33 existing emoji. For example, you’ll be able to pick both a female runner emoji and a male runner emoji, or a man or woman getting a haircut:
Google said it hopes these updates help make emoji just a little more representative of the millions of people around the ? who use them.
In other emoji news, Cheapflights is celebrating World Emoji Day (17 July) by launching the world’s first emoji flight search function, enabling mobile users to insert emojis instead of words for their flight origin and destination as they begin their search.
