Your emoji are finally busting free from harmful gender stereotypes.
The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee has agreed to add 11 new professional emoji that Google designers created this spring to protest the subtle gender bias inherent in your texting. The committee is also adding female options to a bunch of previously male-specific characters.
If you look at your emoji keyboard right now, you'll see a woman emoji painting her nails, getting her hair cut, and donning a veil for her wedding, while a man emoji wears a hardhat or goes swimming.
That disparity spurred Google designers to petition for gender inclusivity in existing emoji and design and suggest a wider range of professions for women as well as men.
Unicode approval doesn't mean that the new emoji will magically appear on your keyboard tomorrow, unfortunately. Software makers like Google, Apple, and Microsoft will still need to deploy them.It also doesn't mean that casual sexism will magically disappear. But it does mean that we're officially on our way to a world where our digital symbols better represent our realities.
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