It’s all in the details. The subtleties we probably don’t notice. That is until they are present, and we wonder why it took so long for the rest of the world to catch up.
The first time I used my smartphone I was in awe with all of the emoji options. They had come a long way from the MSN icons of the early 2000’s and now gave me the luxury of using food items and inanimate objects in my communications!
If I really “needed to”, I could send you an array of any emotion I might be feeling, expressed in an emoji. That is unless I felt like being a female with a profession.
On Thursday, Google announced women professionals will soon be better represented in emoji form. In May, they submitted a proposal to create a set of emoji’s “with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women’s careers and empowering girls everywhere.” Within these will be a doctor, a scientist a farmer and a welder, with customizable genders and skin tones.
And while it might make little sense as to why a company as large as Google would go through the effort of changing such a thing, it really does come down to the details. With most emoji users being female, the updates are being made to “help make emoji just a little more representative”.
The world is changing and becoming just a bit more socially aware. With it, is the demand for organizations to follow suit. And while I am still more likely to send a pizza slice emoji than I am the female farmer, I’m grateful to exist during a time (and in a country) in which efforts to respond to underrepresentation of female diversity are being made.
My only question now is, what exactly does a woman look like anyway?
All my love,
– Steph Jael
shirtsareforboys 