Even as debates over gender inequality in the Silicon Valley rage on, a group of employees from Google have proposed a new set of emojis (or pictographs) that will be representative of varied professions of women.
The set of emojis suggested by the Google employees is due to the desire to promote gender equality at the workplace. There are 13 emoji designs, which, to name a few, include a cartoon female doctor, teacher, graduate, software engineer, farmer, mechanic, nurse, plumber, clerk, tax preparer, chef, cook, dentist, radiologist, chemist, accountant and even a rock star!
On May 10, the team submitted its designs to the Silicon Valley-based Unicode Consortium, which is basically the non-profit regulatory group that gives the green signal to new emojis. The group runs a subcommittee that oversees the development of novel emojis.
"Our proposal is to create a new set of emoji that represents a wide range of professions for women and men with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women's careers and empowering girls everywhere," says Google [PDF]. "We believe this will empower young women (the heaviest emoji users), and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world."
The proposal asserts the fact that in all spheres and professions, women are becoming prominent figures and a force to contend with. It reiterates the fact that with the changing times, the emojis should also be reflective of the reality that women have a significant role to play in all walks of life and professions.
The new emoji designs the Google team has proposed before the Unicode Consortium are in the following categories: healthcare, business, education, science, technology, industry, farming, food service and music.
The professions for the emojis were based on the idea of what would be illustrative of the modern-day workforce.
Even though the proposal of the emojis was done with the purpose of improving women's representation, each of the suggested emojis also comes with a related male counterpart.
The Google team who proposed the new emojis revealed that Emoji Feminisim op-ed by Amy Butcher was an inspiration. The team is optimistic that the new 13 emoji categories will be approved and make their way to users before the end of this year.
