It just boggles my mind that a high ranking Polish government official is taking on Ikea for its sexist instructional pamphlets

There was a time when the mere mention of the word “feminism” in Poland would make people laugh. Did you know that American women are asking that sexist language be removed from school texts? Laughter. Hey, in the States, women are demanding that employers focus less on their appearance and more on their performance. Laughter. And so on.

So you could have knocked me over today when I read in the Polish paper that the Polish Minister for Social Affairs is spearheading the campaign to make Ikea redesign its pamphlets providing instruction on the assembly of furniture.

Why have we missed the boat on this one in the States? It seems that there are more than two thousand brochures with Ikea instructions and not one of them has a sketch of a woman doing the assembly. All guys. And the women in Poland are livid. [Why do I think that, after a day at work and an evening of housework and child care, it is indeed the women who are assembling tables and beds…]

The Minister herself states: I’m right there, putting the screws into the furniture, as are thousands of Polish women! [What did I say?] That’s how attitudes toward women are shaped, in these little ways – claims a representative to the Parliament. And I am sitting here reading and this time I’m the one chortling away. Because finally, issues of sexism are, to the Pole, no longer simply funny.