Emoji and Gender: How Digital Representation Is Changing

When Emoji Had Only One Gender

In the early days of emoji, representation was barely a consideration. The original 176 emoji designed by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999 for NTT Docomo included a handful of human figures — all of them simple 12×12 pixel grids, generic, and effectively male-coded. A runner, a dancer, a police officer, a construction worker. Nobody thought twice about it. In 1999, emoji were a novelty feature on Japanese pagers, not a global communication system.

When emoji were standardized by Unicode starting in 2010 (Unicode 6.0), the situation improved slightly but the defaults were baked in. The 💃 dancer was female. The 👮 police officer was male. The 👷 construction worker was male. The 💂 guard was male. Women got the dancer, the 👰 bride, and the 👸 princess. The underlying assumption — that certain roles had default genders — was about to get very uncomfortable.

The Push for Gender Equality in Emoji

The turning point came in May 2016 when four Google employees — Rachel Been, Nicole Bleuel, Agustin Fonts, and Mark Davis (who is also a co-founder of Unicode) — published a proposal titled "Expanding Emoji Professions: Reducing Gender Inequality." The core argument was blunt: the existing emoji set reinforced stereotypes by limiting women to dancer, bride, and princess while men had police officer, detective, guard, and construction worker.

The Unicode Consortium approved the proposal, and Emoji 4.0 (late 2016) introduced gendered variants for professions and activities. 👩‍🚒 A female firefighter. 👨‍🍳 A male cook. 👰‍♂️ A man with a veil. The barriers were broken in both directions.

The implementation used the ZWJ (Zero Width Joiner) system: a base person emoji + ZWJ + gender sign (♂️ or ♀️) created the gendered variant. Backward compatible — platforms that did not support gendered emoji would just show the base emoji plus a gender symbol. No breakage.

Beyond the Binary: Gender-Neutral Emoji

While male and female variants were a significant step forward, they still operated within a binary gender framework. Starting with Unicode 12.0 in 2019, the Consortium began introducing explicitly gender-neutral emoji options.

The 🧑 gender-neutral person emoji uses a design that intentionally avoids signaling either male or female. Platforms approach this differently — Apple uses short hair with somewhat androgynous features, Google goes for a similar look with rounder styling, Samsung has its own interpretation. The designs have gotten better over time; early attempts were often just "man with slightly longer hair."

Gender-neutral options now exist for professions (🧑‍⚕️ health worker, 🧑‍🍳 cook, 🧑‍🚀 astronaut), activities (🧑‍🦽 person in wheelchair, 🏊 person swimming), and roles (🧑‍🎄 Mx Claus — yes, that is real). The three-way system of man/woman/person gives users the ability to choose the representation that best matches their identity, or to use the neutral option when gender simply is not the point of the message.

Skin Tone Modifiers: Another Dimension of Representation

Gender representation cannot be discussed in isolation from skin tone. The two systems interact in important ways.

In 2015, Unicode 8.0 introduced the Fitzpatrick scale skin tone modifier system — named after Harvard dermatologist Thomas Fitzpatrick who created the original skin classification in 1975. Five modifier characters (types I-II through VI) could be applied to human emoji. This was a direct response to years of criticism that emoji only showed yellow (or white-coded) skin by default.

The combination of gender variants and skin tone modifiers created a matrix of representation. Each person-based emoji could potentially appear as:

• Man with 6 skin tones (default yellow + 5 Fitzpatrick)
• Woman with 6 skin tones
• Gender-neutral person with 6 skin tones

That is 18 variants for a single concept. For multi-person emoji like couples and families, the combinations explode into the thousands.

The Impact on Real Communication

Research has shown that representation in emoji genuinely affects how people communicate. A 2019 study by Robertson et al. published in *Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction* found that after skin tone modifiers were introduced, 52.6% of emoji with skin tones used a non-default tone — people actively chose to represent themselves when given the option.

A separate study in *New Media & Society* found that people who do not see themselves represented in emoji sometimes avoid using human emoji altogether, substituting objects or animal emoji where a person emoji would be more natural. Think about that for a second: the absence of representation does not just feel bad — it changes behavior. People literally route around the gap.

Companies have also taken notice. Marketing teams now consider emoji representation in their campaigns, choosing inclusive emoji or platform-specific emoji that match their audience demographics. Customer service teams are trained on appropriate emoji use that does not assume the gender or ethnicity of the person they are communicating with.

Making Gender Work in 16 Pixels

Creating gender-variant and skin-tone-variant emoji presents enormous design challenges. Each new person emoji potentially requires 18 different designs (3 genders × 6 skin tones). For multi-person emoji like 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 people holding hands, the combinations are 3 genders × 6 skin tones × 3 genders × 6 skin tones = 324 variants. For a single emoji concept.

Apple, which typically implements the most variants, has a dedicated emoji design team that produces thousands of individual glyphs. Their emoji font file (Apple Color Emoji) is over 100 MB — and the majority of that size comes from skin tone and gender permutations. Each design must be recognizable at 16×16 pixels, convey the intended profession or activity, and look distinct from similar emoji.

The design philosophy has evolved over time. Early gendered emoji often used superficial signifiers — long hair for women, short hair for men. Newer designs try to distinguish gender through a combination of facial features, body proportions, and subtle styling cues rather than relying on stereotypical markers.

Cultural Perspectives on Emoji Gender

Different cultures have very different relationships with gender representation in emoji. In some countries, the push for gender-neutral emoji is welcomed as a step toward inclusion. In others, it is viewed as unnecessary or even controversial.

Japan, where emoji originated, has generally been accepting of gendered variants but less focused on gender-neutral options. European countries, particularly in Northern Europe, have been among the strongest advocates for inclusive emoji representation. The United States has seen both strong support and pushback, often along political lines.

Some platforms have handled this by making gender selection explicit — requiring users to choose a gendered or neutral variant rather than defaulting to one. Others default to the gender-neutral option, requiring users to actively select a gendered variant if desired.

Accessibility and Gender in Emoji

For screen reader users, the gender of emoji matters in a different way. Screen readers announce emoji by their official Unicode name, which includes the gender designation. "Woman pilot" is spoken differently from "Man pilot" and "Person pilot."

This means that for visually impaired users, the gender choice in emoji is always explicit and audible, even when sighted users might not consciously notice it. The accessibility implications make thoughtful gender selection in emoji even more important — your emoji choices are literally narrated to some of your audience.

Emoji Gender Outside the Human Category

An often-overlooked aspect of emoji gender is how it applies to non-human characters. Many emoji that appear gender-neutral actually have gendered names in the Unicode specification.

The 🧜‍♂️ merman and 🧜‍♀️ mermaid are explicitly gendered, though a gender-neutral 🧜 merperson also exists. The 🧚 fairy was originally female-coded in most platform designs before variants were added. The 🦸 superhero and 🦹 supervillain have male, female, and neutral variants.

Even animal emoji carry gender. The 🐓 rooster and 🐔 chicken. The 🐏 ram and 🐑 ewe. These distinctions are less socially charged than human gender representation, but they show how deeply gender concepts are woven into the emoji system — even where you would not expect them.

Where We Are Now

As of Emoji 16.0 (2024), the standard includes male, female, and gender-neutral variants for virtually all person-based emoji. Skin tone modifiers can be applied to all of these. The total number of emoji (counting all variants) exceeds 3,700 — up from the original 176 in 1999. The technical infrastructure for inclusive representation is largely in place.

The remaining challenges are more about culture than technology:

• Default behavior: What should the "default" person emoji look like? Should there even be a default?
• Platform consistency: Gender-neutral emoji look different across platforms, sometimes appearing clearly neutral on one platform and somewhat gendered on another
• Discovery: Many users do not know that gender variants exist because the emoji picker interface does not always make them easy to find
• Cultural adoption: In some regions and communities, gender-neutral emoji are not widely used simply because people are not aware of them or do not feel they need them

What Comes Next for Gender in Emoji

The trajectory is clear: emoji representation will continue to become more inclusive. Proposals for new emoji increasingly consider representation from the outset rather than treating it as an afterthought. The Unicode Consortium has formalized its commitment to inclusive emoji through its guidelines for emoji proposals.

But representation through emoji is not just about having the right characters available. It is about making them discoverable, making them render consistently across platforms, and building a culture where people feel comfortable using the emoji that best represent them.

Emoji started as 176 tiny Japanese pictographs with zero consideration for diversity. Today they are one of the most visible arenas where debates about representation, identity, and inclusion play out in real time. The evolution from male-default stick figures to a rich system of 👩‍🦰 hair styles, 🧑‍🦼 disability representation, 🏳️‍⚧️ identity flags, and multi-skin-tone 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 families tells the story of how our expectations for digital communication have grown — and how a small nonprofit in Mountain View, California has scrambled to keep up.