Finally: Female Emojis Will Have Actual Occupations Other Than "Dancing Lady"

(Image credit: Google)

If you try to send an emoji of a woman right now, you could send a bride, or a princess, or a dancing lady, or a woman getting a haircut. If you want to send an emoji of a man, you can send a police officer, a detective, or a man running. Notice anything different between these two?

Emojis depicting women tend to be passive, girly, and frivolous, and those depicting men are active and involve occupations. But now, men can be frivolous and women can be career-oriented, too, thanks to a new set of emojis that promote gender diversity, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Back in May, Google proposed new emojis to Unicode, the committee that approves such things across multiple platforms like iOS and Android. The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (yes, that's a thing), has now agreed to 11 new "professional emoji" that will have male and female options, along wth every skin color, making more than 100 new emojis. The occupations are farmer, welder, mechanic, health worker, scientist, coder, business worker, chef, student, teacher, and rockstar.

And that's not all: Unicode is also adding male and female versions to 33 other emojis, so there will be a female runner and police officer and a male getting a haircut. According to a Google blog post, these new emojis will be available on future versions of Android and other mobile platforms.

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Megan Friedman is the former managing editor of the Newsroom at Hearst. She's worked at NBC and Time, and is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.