14 DAY TRIAL // In a marketing campaign that raises questions about their ethical commitment to promoting gender equality, Swedish company IKEA airbrushed all the women out of its Saudi catalogue.
IKEA marketing executives simply adapted their catalogue to unsaid Saudi advertising rules. In Saudi Arabia, very few adverts include women and when they do, they are wearing long dresses with sleeves covering their arms completely, as well as scarves that hide their hair.
Women's uncovered body parts are censored out of imported magazines sold in Saudi Arabia, ABC News reports. All visual displays of female body parts, including arms, legs and chests, are banned in printed format.
Free Swedish newspaper Metro on Monday published pages of the Swedish catalogue alongside those from the Arabic state, sparking debates about IKEA's corporate policy and their willingness to conform to gender biased social standards.
The photoshopped version of the catalogue is said to misrepresent family imagery, with mothers airbrushed from portraits of them and their children sharing daily activities.
In one case, a mother was removed from a picture in which she and her son were brushing their teeth together, in their pajamas.
Other parts of the catalogue were canceled completely, as was a page in which 5 women were dining by themselves, advertising a new dining set.
After the images hit the Internet, IKEA spokesmen expressed regret over the company's decision not to integrate women into said catalogue.
"We should have reacted and realized that excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalog is in conflict with the IKEA Group values," a statement released to the press read.
The campaign was criticized by Swedish equality minister Nyamko Sabuni, due to the fact that IKEA's marketing strategies affect Sweden's public image, painting it in a bad, gender-biased light.
The company went on to shift the blame, claiming the catalogue was not published for a branch of the IKEA Group, but for a franchisee outside the holding.
