Women doctors, scientists, welders among 11 new emojis

Back in May, Google proposed 13 new emoji to the Unicode Consortium to better represent women and men in an array of professions. Among the new characters are a doctor, a scientist, a farmer and a welder.

Unicode is the nonprofit organization that considers and accepts new emoji, and makes sure people with different phones can send each other the same emoji.

Google notes in blog post that the professional emoji for women were unfairly limited before, and included only a bride and a princess-which are not actually career options, for most of us at least.

The changes are more representative of men, too.

The emojis will be available in all skin tones, and will come in male versions as well. Emoji depicting people will now be offered with male and female options, meaning that users can choose a female weightlifting emoji or a male emoji receiving a haircut. Since Unicode works across platforms, so will the emoji work on everything from iOS to WhatsApp to SwiftKey and more.

Emojis are used by more than 90 percent of the world’s online population, but until recently, many emojis – including profession emojis – only displayed men on most platforms. Google said Thursday that the Unicode Consortium, which controls emoji standards, has agreed to add 11 emoji in response to Google’s proposal for those “with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women’s careers and empowering girls everywhere”.