Technology giant Google might have been in the midst of a gender equality debate in 2014, what with a survey concluding that the percentage of female employees was as low as 30% , with only 21% executives and 15% in technical jobs, but this latest initiative by the Company might salvage it's image a bit. A team of four Google employees - Rachel Been, Nicole Bleuel, Agustin Fonts and Mark Davis have, in a presentation to the Unicode Consortium, affirmed that they have developed a set of 13 new emoji characters which are designed to represent women better in the professional world.
While furnishing the proposal to the Unicode Consortium, which is a non-profit corporation that approves, characterises and standardises emojis, the team stated “The new emojis depict a wide range of professions for women and men, with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women's careers and empowering girls everywhere.", as reported by The Verge.
The basis for the Google team's research is a report from SocialTimes’s 2015 by AdWeek, which illustrated that 92% of online consumers use emoji, out of which 78% are women. As such, in the emoji universe too, better representation of the female sex is needed.
"The global women's equality movement is growing, so the time to create these emoji is now. All around the world, gender inequality is a focus. Given the fact that women are the most frequent emoji users, and that they span a wide professional spectrum not yet reflected in the current set of emoji, we want to help address this pressing matter of equality.", these were the points made in the presentation, as reported by TOI.
As many as 13 emojis have been proposed which will be representative of women in some selective but diverse areas, such as business, healthcare, science, education, technology, industry, farming, food service, and music sectors. Also the developers haven't neglected to show women in the role of accountants, office workers, clerks, managers, doctors, nurses, dentists, scientists chemists, software engineers, chefs, cooks and rockstars.
This proposal however is not limited to women-only emojis, some emojis for men were introduced by Google as well. So it may be soon that the next time you want to express an emotion, you may have you own personal emoji to reflect it with. It's the perfect answer to the questions raised in the New York Times op-edm aptly called "Emoji Feminism".
Feature Image Credit: Home.bt.com