America’s WWII female-empowerment icon Rosie the Riveter would be proud. As soon as someone finished explaining to her what an emoji is.
Google may not have reached what it considers acceptable diversity in its workforce, but it’s doing its best to ensure women and different ethnicities are represented in emoji-land.
The tech giant announced Thursday it will roll out 11 profession-based emoji in both male and female versions, in a variety of skin tones. “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 said in a blog post.
The company admits in its latest diversity report that “we’re still not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” with a workforce that’s 69 percent male and 59 percent white.
Google noted in its post that while male emoji include such characters as a detective, a cop and some dude wearing a hardhat with a green cross on it, choices for females include a bride, a princess and a woman getting her hair cut.
More than 90 percent of people with access to emoji use them, according to a study cited by Google. That study, by marketing company Emogi, also found that 78 percent of women use emoji often, compared to 60 percent of men.
Google said it had proposed the new emoji to the Unicode Technical Committee, the body responsible for ensuring standardized code in emoji, in May. A subcommittee approved the diversity-promoting emoji on Thursday, the company said.
The new characters include a female techie in front of a computer, a welder, what’s either a music conductor with a baton or a teacher waving a pencil, a doctor, a mechanic, a farmer, and a female with a port-wine stain on her face who must be Satan because she’s throwing the devil-horns hand sign. Oh, wait, according to Unicode she’s a rock star. That might be better.
Unicode addressed what could happen to Google’s new emoji when sent to older devices not supporting them. The female runner, for example, could appear as two icons – a male runner followed by an image of a woman’s head, possibly creating the impression of “a man running from a woman,” according to a Unicode document. If the new woman-runner emoji’s coding included a fallback of the running man followed by the female symbol that is often put on public bathroom doors, recipients with older devices might see “a man running from a woman’s restroom.” Coding was selected instead that would produce the figure of a running man followed by the generic symbol for a woman that’s a circle with a cross beneath it.
Google’s post also noted that Unicode is adding male and female versions of 33 existing emoji, including a surfer, a weightlifter and a Buckingham Palace guard.
A Google spokeswoman said the firm was working to incorporate the new emoji into future Android versions, and that vendors, presumably including Apple for its iPhones, can start the implementation process now.
Photo: New emoji from Google (from Google blog post)
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