Impeccable Marketing Priorities

 "For Ikea to remove an important part of Sweden's image and an important part of its values in a country that more than any other needs to know about Ikea's principles and values - that's completely wrong."  Swedish equality minister Nyamko Sabuni

There's a vast social-cultural difference between Sweden and Saudi Arabia.  There is also a supreme effort at ensuring gender equality exists as a primary social function in Sweden, whereas in Saudi Arabia a supreme deity's values are cited as the template for that country's stringent laws against the intermingling of the sexes, let alone the freedom of women within the country to flaunt their femaleness.

In Sweden, as in most advanced countries of the world, women are free to be themselves, to share equally in all the normal benefits and modes of social contact.  In Saudi Arabia women are constricted; they may not be seen in public unless fully covered, may not appear outside the home unless accompanied by a male relative, may not drive, may not travel without the permission of a male relative.

There are a whole lot of other 'may nots' as well, but that is a matter for Saudi women to exert their influence on their male counterparts in that excessively patriarchal society to become somewhat more enlightened.  The Saudi monarchy has been slowly evolving a process similar to the melting of an iceberg on a frozen planet to permit Saudi women a few more freedoms - yet to devolve; they may now vote for municipal councils.

But for Ikea, to sell their products in that very wealthy oil-and-Wahhabi-fuelled community, it seemed a fair enough agreement to expunge all female depictions from their widely-circulated and -valued catalogues.   Simply airbrushing female figures out of contention for notice in the Islamist state presented no ethical contest to Ikea's head office.

The name of their game, after all, is to sell-sell-sell their incomparable products.

If they can engineer a system of self-guided tunnels throughout their warehouse-emporiums with no short-cuts to the cashiers and exits, to ensure that all their clients are held captive to their products hoping that impulse and exposure will increase their sales, a simple matter like expunging the female figure to satisfy Saudi custom would present no problem to Ikea.