Facebook Redesigns 'Friends' Icon For Gender Equality

Now here's something to cheer up the gals. When you log in to Facebook and look up the 'Friends' icon in the upper right corner, you will notice a change.

Can you see something different in the old and the new icons? The old logo shows the man in the front and the woman behind him, while the new logo on the right shows the woman in front of the man. Now that is one small change, yet what is behind it?

This has been done by the designer Caitlin Winner to reflect the feminist ideology she had learned "as a woman, educated at a women's college", according to mirror.co.uk.

In a post on Medium, Facebook design manager Caitlin Winner wrote that she was offended by the "chip on the woman's shoulder" in the old design, and wanted to show her "as a lady with two robust shoulders."

There were other changes. Winner was redesigning the entire icon, so she reduced the "Darth Vader-like helmet" look on the woman's haircut, replacing it with a shapely bob. She also redesigned the man's haircut. The woman was placed in front of the man.

She wrote: "As a woman, educated at a women's college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon; the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in."

In the "Groups" icon too she brought the woman up in the front again. "I try to question all icons, especially those that feel the most familiar," she said.

"For example, is the briefcase the best symbol for 'work'? Which population carried briefcases and in which era? What are other ways that 'work' could be symbolized and what would those icons evoke for the majority of people on Earth?"

So she wanted to scrap images of briefcases, which are used to represent work, but go back to an age when only men went to office.

There was a wave of reaction to the design. While some people welcomed the design change, one person tweeted: "The silhouettes themselves look nicer I think, but I don't quite get the logic."

Another person found the icons politically incorrect: "While we're at it, those silhouettes are clearly VERY white, middle class people," growled one designer.

Moreover, while Facebook considers itself a good reflection of about 50 genders, according to mirror, the designers here have chosen to show only two genders---the cisgenders.