News

Saudi Arabian IKEA catalog removes women from its pages

October 1, 2012

Apparently women in Saudi Arabia stay away from IKEA stores — or at least they do in the Saudi version of the store's catalog.

According to an article on Times LIVE, the newspaper Metro compared images of IKEA catalogs distributed in the Middle Eastern country to ones distributed elsewhere, showing that in identical frames, the Saudi catalogs had the women airbrushed out.

Metro also showed an example where a female model had been replaced by a man and noted that a female designer had been edited out of the Saudi catalog, according to the article.

Swedish Trade Minister Ewa Bjorling refrained from criticizing IKEA outright, but told Metro: "You can't airbrush women from reality. These images are yet another lamentable example of how much remains to be done concerning gender equality in Saudi Arabia." 

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