Google announced the decision in a blog post today. The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (UES), the group responsible for deciding which emoji should be usable on new devices, has agreed to add 11 new “professional” emoji representing different careers. They will be available in both male and female options and in every currently supported skin tone. In total, over 100 new emoji will be added to the Unicode specification.
Typical male career emoji…
Google
The announcement comes after an earlier proposal by Google to offer more emoji gender equality. Existing emoji options include a number of characters to represent careers including police work, paramedics and detectives. The careers are generally only depicted as being worked by males though. Women are represented in professions like hairdressing.
…and typical female emoji
Google
Google flagged the issue to the Unicode Technical Committee, explaining how it feels current emoji does not accurately reflect the diversity of women’s careers. It argued it doesn’t sufficiently empower young women to choose their own pathway for life, instead endorsing the classical gender divide and predetermined roles it specifies.
In a paper published by the UES, the group conceded that emoji has come to be male-dominant despite Unicode’s best intentions. All emoji are usually defined as gender neutral. However, when implemented by smartphone companies and web browsers, developers typically pick a particular gender to display. More often than not, they choose to represent a male.
The UES acknowledged that this has caused “gender disparities” in emoji. This in turn has led to a lack of emoji that accurately represent the diversity present in various careers and roles. It announced it is building a new, more versatile solution to indicate the gender of emoji, allowing the user to customise whether they see a male or female person.
New emoji for gender equality
Google
Alongside the addition of the 11 new emoji, 33 other emoji are being updated to include the option of a female persona. You’ll be able to have a male or female runner and a male or female person getting a haircut. Previously, vendors tended to implement runners as male and haircuts as female, stereotyping and biasing due to the constraints of the current Unicode spec.
The changes will be implemented in future versions of Android and on other platforms that are fully supporting the latest Unicode standard. Unicode characters carry the same basic messages across devices. Each operating system uses slightly different styles but has the same selection of emoji.
Over 90 percent of the world’s online population use emoji. By more accurately portraying gender equality, Unicode will be able to engage more people and highlight the diversity in today’s working community. Google sees this success as another example of its work to involve women in STEM subjects, providing them with the resources to obtain gender equality.
