There's no shortage of quirky emoji – money with wings, moons with faces, piles of poop with smiling mouths. What emoji do lack, according to a team at Google, is a fair representation of professional women.
In a presentation to Unicode, the organisation that manages and approves emoji, Google staff explained they wanted to "increase the representation of women in emoji". "Our proposal is to create a new set of emoji that represents a wide range of professions for women and men with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women's careers and empowering girls everywhere," they wrote. The presentation to Unicode was made by four Google staffers: Rachel Been, art director; Nicole Bluel, product marketer; Agustin Fonts, product manager and Mark Davis, a Google software engineer and president of Unicode.
According to an AdWeek report cited in the presentation, of the 92 per cent of people who use emoji, 78 per cent of women are frequent emoji users compared to 60 per cent of men. 72 percent of people under 25 use emojis frequently, and 77 per cent of those aged between 25 and 29 also use emojis regularly.
But despite this, the team claimed, the current keyboard does not reflect "the pivotal roles" women play in the world. The current emoji keyboard does have parity between male and female emoji, but the team suggest adding 13 new emoji featuring women in a number of different professions. Similar emojis will also be created representing men.
The Unicode emoji keyboard has rapidly expanded in recent years. In February 2015, Apple added racially diverse emoji, including a redesigned emoji keyboard with "emoji skin modifiers" in an iOS update. The emojis were designed to reflect the Fitzpatrick scale, a standard used by dermatologists to specify skin tone.
Professions suggested by the Google team include:
- Farming
- Industry and manufacturing
- Healthcare
- Technology
- Business representation (i.e. lawyer or "financial worker")
- Education
- Food service
- Rockstar \
The team also said they plan to create a "system of emoji design that can accommodate a broader gender spectrum". "No matter where you look, women are gaining visibility and recognition as never before," they wrote. "Isn't it time that emoji also reflect the reality that women play a key role in every walk of life and in every profession?"
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
