Emoji Of Pregnant Man To Be Introduced This Year

A pregnant man and a handshake between different skin tones will be among updates to the emoji keyboard set to be released later this year.

Unicode Consortium, the non-profit company that provides the code and descriptions behind emojis developed by Apple and Google, says its newly released draft list of emojis is intended to show improved diversity in gender, following criticism that currently available emojis were not sufficiently inclusive.

The update, which was released to mark World Emoji Day this Saturday, July 17, is also set to introduce gender-neutral options for the majority of emojis alongside the masculine and feminine versions already available. This includes options intended to represent transgender and non-binary pregnancies.

For example, alongside prince and princess emojis there will now be the option for a gender-neutral person wearing a crown. Jeremy Burge, chief emoji officer at Emojipedia, said the update would mean that ‘nearly all emojis can have default a gender-neutral option, with choice to use a woman or man where relevant.’

Other emojis set to become available in the coming months include a melting face, a saluting emoji and a hand heart, as well as a mirrorball, an x-ray, a driver’s license and a grey equality sign. The draft icons will now go through a comment process before being officially given final approval in September, with the ultimate decision on which emojis to roll out left up to individual device manufacturers.