• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia
TechraceAhead

Google and Emoji Authorities Put Gender Equality on the Fast Track

By
David Meyer
David Meyer
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
David Meyer
David Meyer
Down Arrow Button Icon
July 15, 2016, 9:54 AM ET

When a quartet of Google employees recently pushed for emojis to become less male-centric, the organization in charge of authorizing the handy characters took notice.

The Unicode Consortium said on Thursday that it would shake things up with urgency. Until now, many emoji have been depicted as men—police officers, for example—while the female characters have been highly stereotyped in other roles, such as hairdressers.

By the end of this year, there will be 11 professions with new emoji for both men and women across a variety of skin tones. These include farmers, welders, mechanics, health workers, scientists, coders, business workers, chefs, students, teachers, and rock stars.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

On top of those emoji, which Google (GOOG) proposed a few months ago, new versions will become available for 33 existing emoji that currently portray only a man or a woman, such as runners and cops.

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization comprised of members from the various companies that may end up incorporating emoji into their products, such as Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), and Google. Unicode standardizes the strings of characters that various messaging apps and computer programs turn into little pictures so that an emoji created in one app will still mean the same thing when it shows up in another.

While it has been working on completing “gender pairs” for some time (for example, adding a prince option to a princess), the Consortium tends to work quite slowly. The next set of new additions to be included in Unicode 10.0 isn’t scheduled to be finalized until the fourth quarter of this year and then rolled out in June 2017.

Thus, to push gender-balanced emoji out to the masses more quickly, the Consortium decided to use a mechanism that combines existing emoji into new pictures rather than creating entirely new emoji. The same mechanism is already used to display diverse family groupings, for example.

For more on emoji, watch our video.

That means the makers of your favorite messaging apps could start designing new female and male welders, surfers, and so on, and then roll them out by the end of 2016.

“We hope these updates help make emoji just a little more representative of the millions of people around the [world] who use them,” wrote Nicole Bleuel, marketing lead and diversity champion for Google’s Emoji team in a blog post on Friday. And instead of writing out “world,” Bleuel used its emoji representation instead.

About the Author
By David Meyer
LinkedIn icon
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Sarandos
Arts & EntertainmentM&A
It’s a sequel, it’s a remake, it’s a reboot: Lawyers grow wistful for old corporate rumbles as Paramount, Netflix fight for Warner
By Nick LichtenbergDecember 13, 2025
3 hours ago
Oracle chairman of the board and chief technology officer Larry Ellison delivers a keynote address during the 2019 Oracle OpenWorld on September 16, 2019 in San Francisco, California.
AIOracle
Oracle’s collapsing stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets
By Eva RoytburgDecember 13, 2025
4 hours ago
robots
InnovationRobots
‘The question is really just how long it will take’: Over 2,000 gather at Humanoids Summit to meet the robots who may take their jobs someday
By Matt O'Brien and The Associated PressDecember 12, 2025
17 hours ago
Man about to go into police vehicle
CryptoCryptocurrency
Judge tells notorious crypto scammer ‘you have been bitten by the crypto bug’ in handing down 15 year sentence 
By Carlos GarciaDecember 12, 2025
18 hours ago
three men in suits, one gesturing
AIBrainstorm AI
The fastest athletes in the world can botch a baton pass if trust isn’t there—and the same is true of AI, Blackbaud exec says
By Amanda GerutDecember 12, 2025
19 hours ago
Brainstorm AI panel
AIBrainstorm AI
Creative workers won’t be replaced by AI—but their roles will change to become ‘directors’ managing AI agents, executives say
By Beatrice NolanDecember 12, 2025
19 hours ago

Most Popular

placeholder alt text
Economy
Tariffs are taxes and they were used to finance the federal government until the 1913 income tax. A top economist breaks it down
By Kent JonesDecember 12, 2025
1 day ago
placeholder alt text
Success
Apple cofounder Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake for $800 in 1976—today it’d be worth up to $400 billion
By Preston ForeDecember 12, 2025
23 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Success
40% of Stanford undergrads receive disability accommodations—but it’s become a college-wide phenomenon as Gen Z try to succeed in the current climate
By Preston ForeDecember 12, 2025
22 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Economy
For the first time since Trump’s tariff rollout, import tax revenue has fallen, threatening his lofty plans to slash the $38 trillion national debt
By Sasha RogelbergDecember 12, 2025
18 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Economy
The Fed just ‘Trump-proofed’ itself with a unanimous move to preempt a potential leadership shake-up
By Jason MaDecember 12, 2025
16 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Success
At 18, doctors gave him three hours to live. He played video games from his hospital bed—and now, he’s built a $10 million-a-year video game studio
By Preston ForeDecember 10, 2025
3 days ago
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • Future 50
  • World’s Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
Sections
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Success
  • Tech
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Environment
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Health
  • Retail
  • Lifestyle
  • Politics
  • Newsletters
  • Magazine
  • Features
  • Commentary
  • Mpw
  • CEO Initiative
  • Conferences
  • Personal Finance
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
About Us
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map

© 2025 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.