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Make the default stickers less sexist

Most of the stickers/memes are male characters (e.g. wearing ties). Why is that? Women work in offices too! So do gender non-conforming individuals. The only place where women appear in the stickers is in the "Office Drama" section. It's 2018, Microsoft, I expect better than that!

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Laurel shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

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  • Kelly commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    When I first used Microsoft Teams, I immediately noticed this, esp when clicking on the Meme category. It's not like I'm mad about it, but I had a "c'mon Microsoft" eye rolling reaction. It hasn't changed much over last couple years but they did add the purple Broccoli character, who appears feminine or gender ambiguous.

  • Rosemary commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    There are stickers of women available in the previews in my version, but when I try to select them and am taken to the text editor, they are converted to men.

    Could we please maintain the gender between preview and editable version? It's great that they are available theoretically, but I would love to be able to send a sticker of a woman in reality as well.

    Attached is the preview image indicated with blue arrow and also the editable image as sent in a message.

    Thanks

  • Zoe Martin commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    THANK YOU. This is a huge issue and blatantly sexist. This shows me that there are no women working at Microsoft at all for you to not even notice. Or no men who even notice when women no longer exist. Not only that- but the only women featured are causing 'office drama' and are practically hysterical.

    None of you male developers even noticed that there are no women? Don't you realize that 50% of your market will want stickers that they can see themselves in? (for our company of over 40,000 employees across the globe made up of 65% women, it seems odd to not have considered this).

    I mean if women made up 30% of the images (which is the average in all forms of media, movies, television shows, journals, etc. despite us making up 51% of the population) I might have not made a fuss.

    But there are a grand total of 7 women out of hundreds of images of men, boys and animals dressed up in 'male' attire. And the only 7 women are all depicted as overly emotional. Thank you for solidifying the stereotypes that we have to battle day in and day out to fight, only in 2018 to still be told we are too emotional for the workplace- all in front of our fellow colleagues.

    And bringing up this issue to my colleagues forces me to be the negative nancy while they are rolling out this new tool to replace slack. So it reinforces the idea that we are the source of drama.

    But 'dramatic' 'hysterical' 'aggressive' 'fiesty' are all terms we know are designated just for women who ask to be respected. Particularly at work.

    Bravo Microsoft. I suggest adding many more women to your leadership teams, programming teams- OR at least ask for some women's input before releasing these to the whole world.

  • Alex commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This request is very sexist as well: women can wear ties too.

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