Ikea apologises over all-male catalogue

“We realise that people are upset about this and that the publication does not live up to what IKEA stands for, and we apologize for this,” executive Shuky Koblenz said in a statement on Thursday.

Earlier IKEA’s Israeli office had issued a statement in response to issuing the catalogue, explaining that “due to requests we received, we decided to launch an alternative and special catalogue, which allows the religious and Haredi communities to enjoy thumbing through our products and the solutions that IKEA offers in accordance with their lifestyle.”

The Israeli branch of the Swedish furniture giant had released the catalog in an attempt to attract ultra-Orthodox Jews as customers, as some 10 percent of Israel’s 8.6 million citizens follow a strict interpretation of Jewish laws.

Ultra-Orthodox women dress modestly in long skirts, long sleeves and headscarves, and consider pictures of women immodest and against religious law.

The regular Ikea catalogue in Israel features a “multicultural” group of men and women, featuring gay and mixed-race couples, while the male-only catalog features ultra-Orthodox models wearing sidelocks and kippas.

The highlighted items in demand include bookshelves carrying extensive collections of books on Jewish law, and folding tables and beds meant to accommodate visitors during big family gatherings on Jewish holidays.

The texts in the catalogue are also aimed at the ultra-Orthodox. As such, in addition to a table decked out for the Sabbath and shelves full of prayer books, there were captions calling for customers to “savor the familial togetherness,” featuring men raising their sons, while the womenfolk are nowhere to be found.

Online newspaper “Times of Israel” reported that the brochure “sparked a wave of reactions online”, ranging from comments such as “Where did the mother go in this picture?” to remarks such as “I didn’t know there are single-parent families in the Haredi sector too.”

This is not the first time Ikea has sparked outrage with its promotional material. In 1994, the company broadcast an advertisement featuring a gay couple in the US, prompting religious conservatives to boycott the company.

In 2012, Ikea airbrushed women out of their catalogs for the Saudi Arabian market and in 2013, the company was criticized by LGBT activists for omitting a story about a lesbian couple from the Russian edition of its in-store magazine. A company spokesperson justified the measure, saying that article might have broken Russia’s law prohibiting positive portrayals of gay people.