This is not the only icon on Facebook where the women will now be in the front as even the group icon has been redesigned to give more importance to the feminine participation.
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One of Facebook’s iconic logos just got an update.
Next, I was moved to do something about the size and order of the female silhouette in the “friends icon”. As an educated woman who strongly supports gender equality, victor could not help herself but see the symbolism of the current icon: the woman’s icon was created to literally be in the shadow of the man.
Victor wrote that she assumed no ill intentions, just a lack of consideration.
Continuing with the enhancements, victor fixed the icon’s hair design and she wanted to try out something different than the rather “Darth Vader-like helmet”.
The changes were made to the tiny icons that appear in the upper right-hand corner of the social networking site.
In both cases, Caitlyn has placed the women in front, while simultaneously making the men in the background a little larger.
Victor wrote that she also wasn’t thrilled about the “friends” icon, where a dwarfed female logo shrank behind the male one.
Facebook has been busy updating its look.
But besides this symbolic gesture at Facebook, gender diversity at the tech giant still needs work. So subtle, in fact, most users probably would not realise.
It’s not the first time someone at Facebook has launched their own project to make small but symbolically-important changes.
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has published extensive research on gender issues in Silicon Valley. There in the middle of the photoshop file were two vectors that represented people.
Facebook design manager Caitlin victor introduced a redesigned friends icon, explaining the change on Medium. However, this change may seen as be a step in the right direction for a company that has been criticized for not hiring more women. Soon, the icons were up and circulated across users all over the globe.
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The Facebook staffer chose to scrap the old “friends icon”, which showed a man standing in front of a woman, flipping it so the lady is in pole position.
