Article
IKEA's Saudi Arabia catalog erases women; company expresses regret
IKEA removed images of women from the Saudi Arabia version of its catalog, a decision that the furniture giant now says clashes with its values. Swedish publication Metro posted a comparison of the Saudi Arabian mailer and the Swedish version, showing that women present in the latter were missing from the former...The image of a pajama-clad woman...is erased in the catalog distributed in the Arab state...IKEA Group said in a statement that its values “support the fundamental human rights of all people” and “do not accept any kind of discrimination.”...“As a producer of the catalog, we regret the current situation,” IKEA Group said. “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.” The company continued: “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 Catalogue worldwide.”