Woman

To show an adult without a gender label. Typeface designer Paul Hunt proposed it in 2016, alongside gender-inclusive child and older-adult figures, because most human-form emoji came only as a man or a woman, with no neutral counterpart.

A 2017 Unicode memo proposed its practical job, later standardized: joined to an object, 🧑 names a role such as doctor or astronaut without saying whether the worker is a man or a woman. 👨 and 👩 build the same roles with gender stated.

What does 🧑 mean when someone sends it?

Someone whose gender isn't the point. Alone it works as a stand-in: a character in a story, an unnamed plus-one, anybody. The surrounding words decide who.

In 2017 messages also paired it with birthday wishes and “adulting” (joking slang for doing dull grown-up chores) to mark becoming an adult. It's a real but niche reading.