Ghosts appear when IKEA disappears women

Last updated on: October 2, 2012 at 9:19 am by mollie

Ghosts appear when IKEA disappears women 2012-10-02T09:19:48-04:00 mollie

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What’s the world coming from if you can’t cater to Saudia Arabian consumers by airbrushing all women out of pictures in your catalog? Swedish furniture giant IKEA did that and they’re hearing it from angry women and human rights activists. Women: can’t have them in your fancy catalog, can’t airbrush them out of existence.

Anyway, the Wall Street Journal had a big piece in its business section on the brouhaha:

Representatives for Swedish furniture giant IKEA on Monday apologized for removing women from some of the photos in catalogs shipped to Saudi Arabia, and said the blame lies squarely with them, not the local franchisee.

The move to manipulate photos sparked criticism from government officials in Sweden and raised questions about how IKEA is living up to its own values.

IKEA’s catalog is shipped all over the world, with the company this year expected to publish 200 million copies with 62 different versions. The bulk of the catalog is exactly the same in most markets, but the company has said in the past it tailors the images to suit fashion-related tastes of local markets.

In some cases, however, the catalog is changed to align with cultural standards.

So we learn that IKEA has its own values and that the Saudi Arabian culture is different from that.

But those values and cultures aren’t explained very well.

There’s a sample of what the airbrushing accomplishes above (voila! No woman!). And we learn how a Stockholm newspaper broke the story. We learn, again, that the airbrushing of women so as to pretend that women don’t exist is something IKEA now regrets.

[IKEA spokeswoman Ulrika] Englesson Sandman said the omissions were completely needless since Saudi Arabia doesn’t prohibit women from being depicted in marketing material. “We understand why people are upset,” she said.

Saudi Arabia is often criticized for treatment of women that includes forbidding travel, study or work without permission from their male guardians. Saudi Arabia also prohibits women from driving a car.

OK, I realize that the Wall Street Journal is simply quoting the spokeswoman, but she’s wrong. Or not telling the whole truth. There are unbelievably dramatic restrictions on the depictions of women in Saudia Arabian marketing, including at the IKEA in Riyadh. It’s obvious that IKEA didn’t just — on a crazy whim based on nothing — decide to spend a lot of time and money removing women from ads. They did it for a reason. You can learn a bit about that reason by looking at the photos of the furnishings at the IKEA in Riyadh.

Call me crazy but maybe the story should quote some people who are not spokeswomen for IKEA. Perhaps the group investigating itself for why it did something isn’t the best one to talk to about what it all means. Maybe an outsider or two could help.

And when quoting the IKEA folks, maybe we could get them to explain more about their values than a simple reference to their non-discrimination policy.

And I can’t be the only person who wonders why religion doesn’t make an appearance in this story (apart from learning that IKEA doesn’t discriminate based on religion).

Talk about a ghost.

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