New emoji seeks to remove shame over periods
Women will be able to use an emoji to chat about their periods from next month, which will help to end the shame associated with menstruation in many parts of the world.
Coding consortium Unicode, which distributes emojis across mobile devices, said it will include the period emoji a drop of blood - in March along with 58 other new symbols, including ones to represent people who are deaf and mixed-race couples.
There are also new symbols for same-sex couples, a guide dog for blind people and a person using a wheelchair.
“The inclusion of an emoji... is a huge step towards normalising periods and smashing the stigma which surrounds them,” said Lucy Russell, head of girls’ rights at Plan International UK, which lobbied for the emoji for two years. “An emoji isn’t going to solve this, but it can help change the conversation. Ending the shame around periods begins with talking about it.”
Menstruation is still a taboo in many countries. In Nepal, the centuries-old Hindu practice of “chhaupadi”, where women are banished from their homes during their periods, has already led to four deaths in the past few weeks.
Women refer to periods using some 5,000 euphemisms, such as “on the rag” and “Bloody Mary”, a 2016 survey of 90,000 people in 190 countries found.
Plan International said nearly half of 18 to 34-year-old women that it surveyed believed a period emoji would make it easier for them to overcome the embarrassment of talking about menstruation.