• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 11, 2016

A group of Google employees has proposed a set of emoji to the Unicode Consortium, the body that approves new emoji, representing professional women in the modern workforce. The 13 range from businesspeople to factory workers, and rock stars to scientists.

"We believe this number allows us to represent a wide variety of professions without introducing too much complexity to the implementation," explain Rachel Been, Nicole Bleuel, Agustin Fonts, and Mark Davis, the co-authors of the proposal

The authors say women are the "heaviest users of emoji," although it highlights search trends which indicate that people search for women and men emojis with nearly the same frequency. Interest over time, however, in women emojis has grown.

Emoji related to professions are searched for more frequency than runner emojis, for example. To determine an initial set of professions that would represent women well, the group aggregated information from sectors like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jobs and Growth from periodicals like U.S. News and World Report; and Media and Culture representing trends such as women in science and technology.

While the new set of emoji focuses on goal-orientated women, each new professional emoji comes with a male counterpart.

Once the proposal has been approved, the set of emoji becomes registered. Platforms like Android and iOS that support them can add the symbols to their emoji list.

Approval comes from board members of the Unicode Consortium, including folks from Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, among others.

Diversity is an increasingly important issue in the tech world. Google has been a huge proponent of not only divulging diversity in its workplace, but continuously working to support women in technology.

In 2014, Google launched the #40Forward program, doling out $1 million in aggregate to companies that have pledged to increase female participation by 25% with a year.