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Emojis aren’t reflecting gender equality at the moment and Google wants to do something about it.
A handful of employees at the company have created a new set of emojis to better represent women in the workplace.
The global tech giant submitted 13 designs – that include illustrations of female plumbers, engineers, chemists and farmers – in a proposal to the Unicode Consortium – which oversees the creation of new emojis.
“No matter where you look, women are gaining visibility and recognition as never before,” the proposal states. “Isn’t it time that emojis also reflect the reality that women play a key role in every walk of life and in every profession?
“Our proposal is to create a new set of emojis that represent a wide range of professions for women and men with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women’s careers and empowering girls everywhere.”
After being inspired by an article published in the Sunday Review of New York Times, the team – consisting of four Google employees – is proposing that new male and female emojis be displayed in combination with existing ones.
The team says it would like to get the new set of emojis standardised by the end of 2016.
“We believe we can have a larger positive impact by adding 13 new emojis that depict women across a representative sample of professions,” the submission adds.
“We believe this will empower young women (the heaviest emoji users), and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world.”
You can read Google’s full proposal here.
