13 New Emojis Aim to Empower Women

Google team hopes they'll be available this year
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted May 11, 2016 11:17 AM CDT
13 New Emojis Aim to Empower Women
There's even one inspired by David Bowie.   (Unicode)

Emojis recently became more diverse, but they're still lacking in representing women in the workforce. There's a flamenco dancer, a ballet dancer, and a princess, but that's about it, author Amy Butcher recently wrote in the New York Times. "We are told we are the new generation of American women; no longer a minority, we are, in fact, the majority of breadwinners in American homes. And yet the best we can get is the flamenco." Feminine hygiene products maker Always also highlighted the issue in a viral video. Now, thanks to a team from Google, women may get more selection. The team has created 13 emojis of male and female farmers, chefs, doctors, scientists, and more and submitted them to the Unicode Consortium, which oversees emoji creation, reports BuzzFeed.

The proposed emojis are actually created by combining existing icons, notes Gizmodo. To get the female scientist emoji, for example, you'd pair the woman and microscope emojis, while a woman and a fried egg would make a female chef. "We believe we can have a larger positive impact by adding 13 new emoji that depict women across a representative sample of professions," the Google team writes in the proposal, per the Verge. "We believe this will empower young women (the heaviest emoji users), and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world." The team hopes to have the emojis available by the end of the year, and will likely meet that goal; one team member happens to be Unicode's co-founder and president. (More emoji stories.)

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