• 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

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
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
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • 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
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
Fortune Secondary Logo
  • About Us
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Diversity And Inclusion
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

AsiaChina
‘Raise a lobster’: How OpenClaw is the latest craze transforming China’s AI sector
By Nicholas GordonMarch 14, 2026
5 hours ago
Big TechRobotics
Travis Kalanick sees benefits of being in stealth mode for 8 years. ‘You build a culture of people that want to build and do not need to be famous’
By Jason MaMarch 14, 2026
7 hours ago
vivek
CommentaryRobotics
The U.S. is winning the AI chatbot war — and losing the one that actually matters
By Vivek RanadiveMarch 14, 2026
13 hours ago
dimitris
CommentaryAI agents
We need a new Turing test — and Moltbook just proved it
By Dimitris TsementzisMarch 14, 2026
13 hours ago
pahnke
Commentaryfarming
The 2026 farm bill quietly hands big tech control over American farmland. Here’s the fine print
By Anthony PahnkeMarch 14, 2026
14 hours ago
C-SuiteLeadership
Meta’s new AI team has 50 engineers per boss. What could go wrong?
By Claire ZillmanMarch 14, 2026
15 hours ago

Most Popular

placeholder alt text
Commentary
Ray Dalio: I've studied 500 years of history and fear we're entering the most dangerous phase of the 'Big Cycle'
By Ray DalioMarch 14, 2026
15 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Success
When Jamie Dimon was fired from Citigroup, his daughters asked: 'Will we be homeless? Can I still go to college? Can I have your phone?'
By Eleanor PringleMarch 13, 2026
2 days ago
placeholder alt text
Middle East
Trump's AI czar calls for U.S. to 'get out' of war and warns Iran has a 'dead man's switch' that could render Gulf states almost uninhabitable
By Jason MaMarch 14, 2026
9 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Personal Finance
The national debt isn't $39 trillion. One economist says it's actually $100 trillion
By Nick LichtenbergMarch 13, 2026
2 days ago
placeholder alt text
Law
‘Playing with fire’: Jeffrey Epstein bankrolled Bill Gates reported ex-girlfriend for years—then asked to be repaid five months before he died
By Eva RoytburgMarch 14, 2026
16 hours ago
placeholder alt text
Success
Meet Chresten Wilson, the airline captain set to become United’s most senior female pilot ever—the job pays $400K and doesn’t require a college degree
By Preston ForeMarch 13, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 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.