Powerful women welcome new female emoji
In honor of World Emoji Day, Google released a series of new emoji that are more inclusive of women from diverse backgrounds and all walks of life. A number of powerful women chimed in on social media to welcome the change.
"More than 90 percent of the world's online population use emoji. But while there's a huge range of emoji, there aren't a lot that highlight the diversity of women's careers, or empower young girls," Google wrote on its official blog.
We're celebrating #WorldEmojiDay with over 300 new emoji to help better represent women. https://t.co/sIfffsuAmk pic.twitter.com/mRRirJOgaR
— Google (@google) July 17, 2016
To help address this lack of diversity, Google developers unveiled proposed new emoji depicting women in various professions back in May at the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit that sets international standards for text characters so that they appear consistently across devices and computers. Flash forward to July 14, and Unicode announced 11 new professional emoji with male and female options, as well as male and female versions to 33 existing emoji. Users also have the option to choose among a range of different skin tones to personalize the characters.
This move to offer a more diverse face to the world of emoji was greeted positively on social media by women who long felt their lives weren't being represented.
From TV powerhouse and author Shonda Rhimes to former California First Lady and journalist Maria Shriver to everyday women, the new emoji so far have received a warm welcome.
Look! Emojis now know women have all kinds of careers! Go @google! #WorldEmojiDay pic.twitter.com/BxcCAydJ8C
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) July 17, 2016
Excited to see the new #emoji represent all the jobs women are already doing. Great job @Google #WorldEmojiDay pic.twitter.com/pC4A8sMHmT
— Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) July 17, 2016
Here's a happy lil me giving a graduation speech pic.twitter.com/CWP2PrFiCM
— Marguerite (@Marzz_Barzz) July 18, 2016
Love the new professional female emoji by @google, which reflect the pivotal roles that women play in the world. pic.twitter.com/kJfrNL01ib
— Karen Lee (@karenlee) July 14, 2016
Google wrote: "We hope these updates help make emoji just a little more representative of the millions of people around the world who use them."