Google wants new emojis showcasing female doctors, scientists, engineers and IT professionals

Google has asked the Unicode Consortium to review a proposal for 13 new emojis focused on depicting women in the workplace in order to offer better role models for girls and reduce gender inequality.

The internet giant has written a proposal asking Unicode to consider emojis that show women working as office workers and bankers, doctors, surgeons, scientists, IT professionals, engineers, mechanics, high-tech industry workers, farmers, chefs, professors and even rock stars.

"Our proposal is to create a new set of emoji that represents a wide range of professions for women and men with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women's careers and empowering girls everywhere.

"While Unicode TR52 brings parity between existing male emoji and female emoji, we believe we can have a larger positive impact by adding 13 new emoji that depict women across a representative sample of professions. We believe this will empower young women, the heaviest emoji users, and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world."

Google went on to stress that people use its search engine to search for the phrase "women emoji" almost as much as they search for "men emoji", and also highlights the fact that many media publications have highlighted the need for females to be accurately represented in emoji professions.

According to SocialTimes, 92% of online consumers use emoji to communicate on a daily basis. Amongst users under the age of 25, 72% are frequent emoji users, while 77% of users aged 25-29 are frequent users. For users aged 30-35, 65% are frequent users, while 60% of people over the age of 35 are frequent users.

Google says that it chose the 13 emoji by looking at the main global sectors of the workforce, as well as bearing in mind the public's current focus on trying to encourage more girls to enter science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields.

The internet giant also stresses that the point of its proposal is not to exclude people who do not identify with a specific gender, but rather to try to be inclusive and make sure that all people are represented in emoji.

"As this is not the focus of this effort, we suggest decoupling the gender-neutral representation of emoji from this proposal. We would encourage other members of Unicode to join us in creating a system of emoji design that can accommodate a broader gender spectrum," Google concluded.

Here is a full list of the new emoji proposed by Google:

• Business: office worker, accountant, banker, manager, financial adviser, tax officer, clerk
• Healthcare: doctor, physician, MD
• Healthcare: nurses, dentist, anaesthetist, radiologist
• Science: scientist, chemist, lab technician
• Education: graduate
• Technology: software engineer, coder, laptop user
• Industry: factory worker, metallurgical worker, mechanic
• Industry: high-tech industry worker, assembly-line worker
• Industry: mechanic, repair person, plumber, handyperson
• Farming: farmer
• Food service: chef, cook
• Education: teacher, professor
• Music: rocker, rock star