Over the last year017 Archives emoji developers and public figures have argued that the universal emoji keyboard makes it difficult, if not impossible, for women to represent themselves beyond a bride or princess.
Recent successful proposals will rectify that problem by offering dozens of new female characters who do things like work in tech, ride a bike, lift weights and weld.
SEE ALSO: Google creates 13 emoji to represent working womenRayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old teenage girl from Saudi Arabia, applauded this important progress, but felt it shouldn't end there. What Alhumedhi really wanted was an emoji to represent Muslim women like herself who wear a hijab or headscarf for religious and personal reasons.
"The addition of the hijab emoji will prove to be a step forward in tolerance and diversity."
So Alhumedhi took the official step of drafting a proposal featuring a hijab to the emoji subcommittee of the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organization that develops and promotes software internationalization standards. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is one of the proposal's co-authors.
"The addition of the hijab emoji will prove to be a step forward in tolerance and diversity," Alhumedhi wrote. "It is distinctive and holds a lot of spiritual meaning to millions of women across the globe, recognizing its importance will ultimately showcase great appreciation from the Muslim community." Alhumedhi, who now lives in Berlin, says the emoji will also serve women of faiths like Orthodox Judaism and Christianity who may wear a headscarf or covering to demonstrate their piety. Additionally, the proposal includes a male headscarf and three renderings of the clothing item on its own. The universal emoji keyboard has no similar offering, though one male character is depicted wearing a turban. Alhumedhi notes that based on her research the Snapchat-integrated Bitmoji is the only social platform to provide a hijab emoji.
Once Alhumedhi's proposal is formally submitted, members of Unicode's Emoji Subcommittee will need to approve it before it can be part of the official emoji keyboards. The approval process typically takes about a year and half, according to Unicode’s estimates. Proposals that are submitted by Oct. 1, 2016, will be considered for approval for the 2017 lineup of new emoji. Discussing her proposal in a Reddit AMA on Tuesday afternoon, Alhumedhi addressed questions about the symbolism of the hijab, particularly the contention that it represents a form of female oppression.
"Might seem baffling, but when I wear the headscarf I actually feel liberated because I'm in control of what I want to cover."
"Might seem baffling, but when I wear the headscarf I actually feel liberated because I'm in control of what I want to cover," she said. "The headscarf allows for people to see past a women's beauty and see her for her knowledge. Now I know, that some women are forced to wear it, but that is micro in comparison to those who see the beauty in it."
The AMA, according to Buzzfeed, was part of an effort by Ohanian to generate support for Alhumedhi's idea. Ohanian sponsored the proposal after learning about it, but Alhumedhi wrote in the document that she learned how to properly submit an idea to Unicode after seeing Mashable’s Snapchat story on the subject.
When Ohanian asked Alhumedhi during the AMA why the emoji was personally important to her, she replied: "Well, for one, I would like to be represented and acknowledged. Because with the massive [number] of women that wear the headscarf today, there should be at least one place on our keyboards reserved for them."
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