Finally! Emoji gender equality gets one step closer

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly visual.

Where once we had to talk or text our feelings now we can communicate instantly via emoji and memes. Now, more than ever, emoji are representative of the broad array of people living in the world. As of today, emojis are getting even more diverse, as The Unicode Consortium, a silicon valley tech organisation that oversees emoji creation, have just approved 11 new professional emoji to better represent women’s careers. The new emoji feature women in a broader set of jobs such as a scientist, a rock star, a farmer and a mechanic. They will also be available in a selection of skin tones, making them just that little bit more relatable to more people. In a blog post today, Google reflected on the unnecessarily gendered emoticons that existed in the past by saying: “More than 90 percent of the world’s online population use emoji. But while there’s a huge range of emoji, there aren’t a lot that highlight the diversity of women’s careers, or empower young girls. There are emoji like these for men: But with options like these for women: The emoji representing women aren’t exactly, well, representative. So we’ve been working to make things better." These proposals were initially presented at the Unicode Consortium's quarterly meeting this year by Google employees who wanted to “highlight the diversity in women’s careers.” The team who presented consisted of four members; Rachel Been, Agustin Fonts, Nicole Bleuel and Mark Davis, who said: “We believe this will empower young women, and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world.” As young women are in fact the heaviest users of emoji’s the team wanted to ensure that they were being included. In the past, Unicode have been accused of not being representative of the full spectrum of human identity, which is why they have also added more skin tone options. Here they are now, in all their rainbow technicolor glory. We're not sure when these new emoji are set to be released but they are a step in the right direction for young girls who can now see themselves in a myriad roles that were not previously available to them in emoji land.