The Women Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Medium-light Skin Tone emoji (👩🏽🤝👩🏼) shows two women holding hands, one with a medium skin tone and one with a medium-light skin tone. It stands for friendship, unity, support, and affection between women, and it lets two people with different skin tones be represented together.
What Does the Women Holding Hands: Medium Skin Tone, Medium-light Skin Tone Emoji Mean?
This emoji means closeness, support, and connection between two women, shown through the simple gesture of holding hands.
The image pairs two women, one with a medium skin tone and one with a medium-light skin tone. That pairing is the whole point of this specific variant: it lets two people with different complexions appear side by side in one character, rather than forcing both to share the same tone.
The meaning depends on the relationship you have in mind. Between friends, it signals loyalty and companionship. Between family members, such as sisters, a mother and daughter, or cousins, it signals care and belonging. Between partners, it can read as romantic, though the emoji itself does not specify that. Context and the surrounding message decide which reading applies.
Core meanings at a glance
- Friendship: a bond between two women who trust each other.
- Solidarity: standing together, supporting one another through hard moments.
- Diversity and inclusion: two different skin tones shown as equals.
- Togetherness: partnership, teamwork, and shared experience.
How Is This Emoji Different From Other Women Holding Hands Emojis?
It differs only in the skin tone combination: the left figure has a medium skin tone and the right figure has a medium-light skin tone.
The base character is Women Holding Hands (👭), and Unicode 12.0 introduced mixed skin tone combinations so that each woman can have her own tone. That produces a large family of near-identical emojis, each with a different pairing. This page covers one specific pairing, and the Unicode name spells it out in full: WOMEN HOLDING HANDS: MEDIUM SKIN TONE, MEDIUM-LIGHT SKIN TONE.
Because the two tones sit next to each other on the skin tone scale, the difference between the two figures is subtle. On some screens it is easy to see, and on small displays the two women may look quite similar. If you want a more visible contrast, a pairing with tones further apart will show more clearly.
How Do You Use the Women Holding Hands Emoji in Texting and on Social Media?
Use it to show affection, gratitude, or solidarity toward a woman in your life, or to celebrate a friendship in a caption.
In messages, it works well as a warm closer or a reply to something kind a friend said. In public posts, it often accompanies photos of friends, sisters, or colleagues, and it appears in posts about women supporting women. Because it contains no text and no strong emotion beyond warmth, it fits a wide range of tones, from casual to sincere.
Example messages
- Twenty years of friendship and she still shows up every single time 👩🏽🤝👩🏼
- Thank you for staying on the phone with me last night. I needed that 👩🏽🤝👩🏼
- Sisters first, always 👩🏽🤝👩🏼
It also works as a standalone reply. If a friend shares good news or a vulnerable moment, sending only this emoji can say "I am with you" without adding words that might feel heavy.
Why Would Someone Choose This Specific Skin Tone Combination?
People choose it to reflect themselves and the person they are celebrating accurately, rather than defaulting to a generic yellow or single-tone version.
Skin tone emojis exist so that people can see themselves in the characters they send. When two friends, partners, or relatives have different skin tones, a mixed pairing like this one represents both of them at once. A medium skin tone paired with a medium-light skin tone suits a pair of women whose complexions fall in that range.
There is also a broader expressive use. Some people pick mixed-tone pairs on purpose to communicate inclusion, cross-cultural friendship, or the idea that connection is not limited by appearance. It is a small way to put representation into an everyday message.
How Does the Emoji Look on Different Platforms?
The emoji is supported across the major platforms, but each vendor draws the two women in its own style, so details like hairstyle, clothing, and pose differ.
Based on the platform data for this emoji, support begins at these versions:
- Apple: iOS 13.2+ and macOS 10.15.1+
- Google: Android 10.0+
- Microsoft: Windows 10 version 1903+
- Samsung: One UI 2.0+
- WhatsApp: version 2.20+
- Twitter (X): Twemoji 12.1+
On a device older than these versions, the emoji may not render as a single image. Instead you might see the component characters displayed separately: a woman, a skin tone swatch, a handshake, and a second woman with another swatch. That happens because this emoji is a sequence of several Unicode characters joined together, and software without the newer font data cannot combine them.
What Is This Emoji Made Of Under the Hood?
It is a sequence of seven code points joined by zero width joiners: U+1F469, U+1F3FD, U+200D, U+1F91D, U+200D, U+1F469, U+1F3FC.
Reading the sequence in order: U+1F469 is the woman, U+1F3FD is the medium skin tone modifier, U+1F91D is the handshake, and the final U+1F469 with U+1F3FC is the second woman with the medium-light skin tone modifier. The zero width joiner (U+200D) tells supporting software to display the whole sequence as one picture.
This emoji belongs to the People & Body category and was added in Unicode 12.0 and Emoji 12.0. You can browse more characters in that group on the People & Body emoji category page. Its shortcode is :women_holding_hands_medium_skin_tone_medium_light_skin_tone:.
Which Emojis Pair Well With the Women Holding Hands Emoji?
Pair it with emojis that add warmth, celebration, or a specific mood to the friendship or support you are expressing.
- Hearts (❤️, 💛, 🩷): add affection to a message of friendship.
- Sparkles (✨): celebrate something good you share.
- Flowers (🌸, 🌷): soften the tone for a thank-you or birthday note.
- Thumbs up: the Thumbs Up emoji adds a quick note of approval or encouragement.
- Eyes: the Eyes emoji works in playful messages like "you two together? I'm watching".
If you are writing about women in a particular role, the Woman Technologist emoji can sit alongside it in posts about women supporting each other at work, for example in a tech mentoring shout-out.
Combination ideas
- Best coworker award goes to her 👩🏽🤝👩🏼✨
- Grateful for every friend who held my hand this year 👩🏽🤝👩🏼💛
For lighter, reaction-style tones, you could contrast it with the Woman Shrugging emoji or the Woman Facepalming emoji in a conversation about shared funny mishaps between friends.
When Should You Avoid This Emoji?
Avoid it when the relationship or tone is unclear and the gesture could be misread as romantic, or when you are not sure the skin tone pairing fits the people involved.
The emoji shows hand-holding, which many people read as affectionate. If you send it to a colleague or acquaintance, they may find it warmer than you intended. In professional channels, it is generally safest with people you know well, or in celebratory group messages where the meaning of support is obvious.
Also think about representation. If you use a mixed skin tone pairing to stand in for two specific real people, check that it does not misrepresent either of them. When in doubt, the simpler default Women Holding Hands emoji or a general friendship emoji avoids assumptions. If you want help finding alternatives, the Emoji Translator can turn a sentence into emojis, and the trending emojis page shows what people are currently using.
How Do You Copy and Paste the Women Holding Hands Emoji?
You can copy this emoji with one click on this page, then paste it anywhere that accepts text.
Click the emoji above, and it is copied to your clipboard. Then paste it into your message, post, document, or email using your usual paste shortcut: Ctrl+V on Windows and Linux, or Cmd+V on Mac, or a long press and Paste on a phone.
Copying the emoji keeps the full seven-code-point sequence intact, including both skin tone modifiers, so the pairing stays exactly as you chose. If it appears as separate characters after pasting, the app or device you are using likely does not support Emoji 12.0 yet, and updating the software usually fixes it.
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