Ikea deleted women from the Saudi version of its furniture catalogue. Shame on Ikea!
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Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea is one of the richest men in the world and Ikea is one of the largest and most successful private companies in the world. In 2011, IKEA had 332 stores in 38 countries, employing over 127,000 people. It sold $23.1 billion worth of goods in 2010.
Ingvar Kamprad and his family came from Sweden where women’s human rights were highly valued and respected, but they compromised with Saudi Arabia’s terribly pathetic anti-women system to sell their products. It is so extremely shameful for Ikea. They should have denied to make women disappear from Saudi Arabia catalogue! Now they have apologized. None should forgive them.
We have nothing to expect from Saudi Arabia. Its a truly barbaric country. But we expect sane people to oppose loudly Saudi Arabia’s insane laws that denigrate, suppress and oppress women. Is it too hard to do?
I would be interested to know how many international companies do not alter their advertizing in Saudi Arabia in a similar manner. From other news reports I’ve read adverts that feature women are either heavily censored or banned if they do not conform to the Saudi’s ultra orthodox sense of decency.
Want to sell as much cheap furniture in Saudi Arabia as possible? Take the women out of the catalogue. Advertizing in Saudi Arabia seems to be a good litmus test for what kind of moral obligation a company is going to heed; profit or humanist.
The goal of business is to make a profit. Just sayin . . .
I like Johnson & Johnson business. Their business philosophy is to prioritize their responsibility: first to the customer, second to the employees, third to the community and finally to the shareholder. The idea being that if you take care of the first three than the forth will be taken of too.
… Yay no sleep… No edit button!
=D
What Saudi Arabia practices is gender based apartheid. Companies doing business there are supporting it.
The Free Market at work. Sigh.
Woman exist. I’ve see ’em. I think I even married a couple.
The delicate and sexually incontinent hothouse flowers of maleness in SA must be protected from the depiction of a female lest they have their minds warped, spines bent and sensitive butterfly souls corrupted. They are all just that sensitive.
It would be laughable if it weren’t so disheartening.
One picture triggered a question: Do they use double beds in SA? It’s hard to understand that after a long day of treating women as inferior beings, husbands ‘allow’ their wives to sleep in the same bed. Apartheid during daytime, caring during the night.
Schizophrenic. That seems so unfathomable to me.
Moral people, yes. Companies, no. If IKEA would’ve wanted to keep the women in, they couldn’t have published the catalogue in Saudi Arabia. No need for a company to take a moral stand if not doing so doesn’t directly benefit those oppressed. It doesn’t benefit the Saudi government to sell furniture, it doesn’t benefit the Saudi women to not sell furniture.
If a corporation makes a decision that doesn’t serve the shareholders then the decision makers get replaced by people who will. The evil here is the combination of capitalism and patriarchy.
Probably you people haven’t seen ads in Saudi. BTW, i also noticed men and kids missing in some places!. Nothing to comment on that? Why spare that either?