Happy International Women’s Day! Today is about recognizing gender equality and women’s contributions to society.
Except if you’re Google. Then, it’s about flowers.
Today, some feminists of both genders took offense to Google’s International Women’s Day doodle, which features a Venus symbol and a bright yellow flower in the center.
“So glad Google placed a flower in the IWD Google Doodle so we know that it’s about women. Plus SHAPES AND COLO[U]RS!!” tweeted @CTrouper.
“Hmm, what makes women special and unique… flowers and watercolors.” – The Google Doodle Team,” tweeted @rsa.
According to Courtney Stoker, a blogger at Geek Feminism, this isn’t the first time Google’s ruffled feminist feathers with its daily doodle. The company has a bad habit of commemorating women’s holidays, like Mother’s Day, with flowers instead of females.
Stoker also observed that out of the 109 inventors and creators Google commemorated on its home page in 2010, just eight were women.
“[I]nstead of actually acknowledging women, or supporting women’s equality, the Google doodle phones it in, as it always does with women,” wrote Stoker. “They slap a flower on the page and pretend they give a shit, when in reality, this representation is worse than none at all.”
Instead, feminist tweeted that they’d rather see the doodle represent images more important to the women’s movement.
“WTH is up with the cutesy femme Google Doodle today? You couldn’t feature the faces of women’s rights campaigners or something, @Google?” tweeted @sesmithwrites.
In 2011, for the 100th anniversary of International Woman’s Day, the doodle depicted a female doctor, female college student, and young girl. Using Topsy, we were unable to find any tweets on March 8, 2011 from users who took offense.