Compare the annual IKEA catalogs disbursed around the world and they are nearly identical, save for a slight difference. The difference is not in the Swedish translations of the furniture or the mock layouts of the numerous living rooms in the catalog. The discrepancy lies in the people who are portrayed in the company’s catalog enjoying themselves in and around the IKEA furniture. Saudi Arabia’s IKEA catalog does not include women in the scenes. One of the most obvious examples is a page in the IKEA catalog, published in Sweden and disbursed around the world, where there is a women standing beside a young boy in a bathroom. However, in the Saudi Arabian version of the catalog, the young woman has disappeared and the boy is standing alone. All along the catalog, women are completely excluded from the photos, which solely showcases men and young children. Additionally, IKEA removed the image of a female designer, featured in their other catalogs, who assisted in designing a line of their home furnishings.
The following article, written as a result of this incident, raises interesting questions about the complexity of choices generated in the globalized world by the encounter of different cultures and sensibility.
After the outcry in response to this revelation began, IKEA responded by called the removal of women a “mistake” “in conflict with the IKEA Group values.” IKEA seems to have agreed with its critics: erasing women capitulates to a sexist society and that is wrong. But, there is a competing progressive value at play: cultural sensitivity. Isn’t removing the women from the catalog the respectful and non-ethnocentric thing to do? Susan Moller Okin wrote a paper that famously asked, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” The question led to two decades of debate and an interrogating of the relationship between culture and power. Who gets to decide what’s cultural? Whose interests does cultural sensitivity serve? The IKEA catalog suggests that (privileged) men get to decide what Saudi Arabian culture looks like (though many women likely endorse the cultural mandate to keep women out of view as well). So, respecting culture entails endorsing sexism because men are in charge of the culture? Well, it depends. It certainly can go that way, and often does. But there’s a feminist (and anti-colonialist) way to do this too. Respecting culture entails endorsing sexism only if we demonize certain cultures as irredeemably sexist and unable to change. In fact, most cultures have sexist traditions. Since all of those cultures are internally-contested and changing, no culture is hopelessly sexist. Ultimately, one can bridge their inclinations to be both culturally sensitive and feminist by seeking out the feminist strains in every culture and hoping to see those manifested as it evolves. None of this is going to solve IKEA’s problem today, but it does illustrate one of difficult-to-solve paradoxes in contemporary progressive politics. ( By Lisa Wade – www.thesocietypages.org )
