Over a hundred new and redesigned emoji characters have become available to iPhone and iPad users with the arrival of iOS 10. In an effort to provide gender options to existing characters, these include new female athletes and professionals.
Up until Apple’s recently-released new operating system, sports-related emojis and most of the occupational emojis showed only men performing activities.
The firm is keen to address this and among the new ones is a female cyclist. There are both road and mountain bike versions with five different skin tone and hair colour options for each. Other new female sport additions include runners, swimmers and weight-lifters.
Announcing the additions, Apple said: “Apple is working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.”
The not-for-profit Unicode Consortium has an emoji subcommittee which decides what gets in. To be eligible, an image must be compatible with other social media platforms and there must also be an expectation that it will be frequently used.
Earlier in the year, The Guardian reported that Google had proposed a new set of female emojis in a bid to promote equality. The Unicode Consortium agreed to add 11 new professional emoji, in both male and female options and with all the skin tones. In addition to this, 33 existing emoji – including the cyclist – had either a male or female version added.

3 thoughts on “Apple’s latest emojis acknowledge that women ride bikes”
Where is the naked woman on
Where is the naked woman on an e-bike emoji?
I can (sort of) see the point
I can (sort of) see the point of smily
and winking
faces, and I’ve been known to use thoughtful face
, but I really don’t see why there is this enormous range of emojis. Do people really send each other messages that look like kindergarten hieroglyphics?
brooksby wrote:
funny you should say that. My 4yr old makes up stories using them on my wife’s phone & sends them to me while I’m at work. Highlight of the day 🙂