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[olimario]

Gender bias in IKEA instructions?
Norway's prime minister says company should alter brochures that show only men assembling furniture.
March 10, 2005: 1:46 PM EST

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) - Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, Norway's prime minister says.

IKEA, which has more than 200 stores in 32 nations, fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds. Its manuals show only men or cartoon figures whose sex is unclear.

"This isn't good enough," Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was quoted Thursday as telling the daily Verdens Gang. "It's important to promote attitudes for sexual equality, not least in Muslim nations."

"They should change this," he said. "There's no justification for it."

IKEA stores are visited by 365 million people a year around the world. Many products have to be assembled by the buyer -- the "flat pack" concept saves the company huge amounts in transport, storage and sales space.

Bondevik added: "I myself have great problems with screwing together such furniture."

Verdens Gang quoted an IKEA spokeswoman as saying: "We have to take account of cultural factors. In Muslim countries it's problematic to use women in instruction manuals."

The company, however, is taking issue with the report.

"Both men and women are featured in our product assembly instructions," the spokeswoman told CNN/Money. "We were sorry to see this report."

Next you'll see complaints that the manuals only show WHITE men and women putting together furniture. Then IKEA will be speciesist for not featuring dogs and cats assembling beds and such.

 

[Hitokage]

Nah, you should complain how they only show people who can avoid breaking things.

 

[fennec fox]

I don't believe this as I just put together a great deal of Ikea furniture and all the people in the instructions were cartoons of indeterminate sex.

Also, doesn't the head of Norway have anything better to do? This sounds like Dan Quayle commenting on Murphy Brown instead of doing anything about the recession.

 

[BlackMage]

I had a manual for putting together a Desk Chair with a woman doing the assembling. I ended up putting it together wrong cause I was too busy staring at her phat ass.