3/30/2005

When are we taking sexual discrimination cases too far?

IKEA, the Swedish furniture company, is being accused of sexual discrimination. It is being claimed that in their instruction manuals for putting together their furniture they only dipict men not woman in the pictures. It is being claimed that IKEA is therefore against sexual equality among men and women. I think that equality between genders is an absolute must, but at some point we have to draw the line. I don't think that IKEA meant any discrimination towards woman in this case. I'm all for women's rigts, but I think some instances are taken too far. Of course women can put together furniture as well as men can, and by thinking that IKEA might assume otherwise is more like discrimination to me. http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/10/news/international/ikea.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Jones' post for a poorly formatted link.

Yikes. It seems to me that the polite thing to do is to first ask Ikea to include some women in its directions. If they don't, then that is discrimination.

Having said that, I do know (more or less) who the pseudonyms corrspond to, and no women have commented on this. Perhaps they feel differently.