We all love emoji, but have you ever noticed the difference between the emoji depicting men compared to those depicting women?
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Amy Butcher wrote about the current sorry state of female emoji:
“Where, I wanted to know, was the fierce professor working her way to tenure?”
“Where was the lawyer? The accountant? The surgeon? How was there space for both a bento box and a single fried coconut shrimp, and yet women were restricted to a smattering of tired, beauty-centric roles?”
If you look at the emoji depicting women, they are most all in roles that are traditionally feminine, while the male emoji were often career focused. For example, there were male builders and police officers, while the female emoji are engaged in traditionally girly activities.
Always also made this point in their #LikeAGirl video from last March:
Google staff have proposed that a more broad range of emoji representing a wider range of professions for women should be implemented by Unicode, who dictate what emoji are available to us on our devices.
They noted that young women were the heaviest emoji users, and said they hope the inclusion of these new emoji will better reflect the important roles women play in the world.
60% of men use emoji, while 78% of women are frequent users, so it only makes sense to have a broader representation of who we are on our keypads.
We can have our salsa lady and haircut emoji, but a surgeon or builder emoji would be great to see.
