IKEA Images Altered to Eliminate Women from Catalog

Who would have thought a catalog could cause so much controversy? The Washington Journal reports that IKEA's catalog is shipped all over the world, with the company this year expected to publish 200 million copies with 62 different versions, one of which is causing customers to question the validity of IKEA’s human rights values.

Sweden's equality minister, Nyamko Sabuni,  told the Associated Press, "For Ikea to remove an important part of Sweden's image and an important part of its values in a country that more than any other needs to know about Ikea's principles and values, that's completely wrong," 

The problem isn’t what’s in the catalog, it what’s been left out… women. Recently the free Stockholm newspaper Metro brought to light that IKEA's Saudi catalogue, which is also available online was identical to the other version only the females were removed. It specifically cited a photo in the bathroom when a family of four was reduced to three when a young female and her reflection were Photoshopped out of the frame.

A spokeswoman for Inter IKEA Systems B.V. – the arm of IKEA that oversees all franchisees including the company's three Saudi Arabia stores – said, "We're deeply sorry for what has happened. It's not the local franchisee that has removed the photos. The error has occurred in the process of producing the proposal to Saudi Arabia, and that is ultimately our responsibility."

IKEA’s catalogs are produced in a way that in some cases eliminates traditional photography and the design is completely digital so the elements can easily be altered. This allows local markets to manipulate the images to fit their regional customers’ preference and even swap out colors or accessories. Even so, no one expected them to omit an entire gender from their marketing material.

"You cannot remove or retouch women out of reality," Swedish trade minister Ewa Bjorling said in an email. "If women aren't allowed to be seen or work then Saudi Arabia is losing half of its intellectual capital." 

The company was quick to offer an apology when the story broke and women’s rights activists everywhere were enraged. "As a producer of the catalog, we regret the current situation," said Ylva Magnusson, spokeswoman for IKEA Group, an affiliate that runs 298 of 337 IKEA stores worldwide and is responsible for the catalog. "We should have reacted to the exclusion of women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalog since it does not align with the IKEA Group values."

"We encourage fair treatment and equal employment opportunities without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, age or sexual orientation," Magnusson said.

This is the second sticky situation IKEA has encountered in so many months. In September a photo of featuring customers sitting on their furniture in ski masks was pulled from the pages of their Russian website. The colorful ski masks in the photo gave a nod to punk band Pussy Riot, three of whose members were jailed after staging a protest against Vladimir Putin in a church.

In the future the company will be keeping a closer eye on all of its images, paying careful consideration to the emotions they may evoke. "We are now reviewing our routines to safeguard a correct content presentation from a values point of view in the different versions of the IKEA Catalog worldwide," said the IKEA Group.

Photos courtesy of IKEA.