Emoji have become pretty big recently, turning into a popular way to communicate without typing out words. We’ve seen emoji become more diversified lately with different skin tone options, but a group of Google employees want to expand emoji even further.
Several Google employees have submitted to the Unicode Consortium a set of emoji that show women in different jobs. The 13 emoji show a woman farmer, chef, teacher, musician, doctor, nurse, scientist, businesswoman, engineer, factory worker, assembly line worker, mechanic, and graduate.
In its letter to the Unicode Consortium, the Googlers explain that they want to “create a new set of emoji that represents a wide range of professions for woman and men with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women’s careers and empowering girls everywhere.” The group points to a growing women’s equality movement and the heavy usage of emoji by young women as support for their request.
There are already some job-focused emoji, but the jobs of policeman, construction worker, and Santa are filled by men, while the women are shown doing things like getting a haircut. These new emoji aim to show women in stronger and more prominent roles.
In their proposal, these Googlers say that they hope to have these emoji standardized by the end of 2016. We’ll have to wait and see if that actually happens, though. The Unicode Consortium will examine the proposal and determine if it will be accepted, altered, or denied. It is worth noting, though, that Unicode president and co-founder Mark Davis is part of the group proposing these new emoji, so that could give them a bit of a boost in their effort to be standardized.
