Eiffel Tower reopens after protest over women staff

The Eiffel Tower was set to reopen Tuesday after staff shut down the Paris landmark in protest over female employees being moved or sidelined during a visit by a Hindu religious delegation.

Workers walked out Monday after a delegation of about 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS, visited the monument on Saturday. The operating company, Société d’Exploitation de la tour Eiffel, known as SETE, acknowledged that the group had asked for the visit to be organized in a way that limited “interactions with women.”

SETE said “these conditions should not have been accepted” and that they were “not in line with SETE’s values, nor with the principles of equality between men and women.”

“It is clearly not an acceptable practice,” SETE president Ariel Weil said. “I restate the Eiffel Tower’s commitment to republican values and to the equality of men and women.”

Union representative Diane Davoine told Reuters that women were told to move when the delegation arrived. “During the visit of this delegation, women were asked to leave their places of work in order to place men there,” she said. Davoine said management had apologized to workers over the incident.

“So that absolutely does not go down well with the employees, with women obviously, who are all humiliated by what happened, by the way some were treated,” Davoine said. She said tensions rose over the weekend, prompting employees to meet Monday “first, to open a dialogue with management, and second, to ensure that women are never treated this way at the company again.”

Eiffel Tower staff said in a statement that they condemned “professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex” during the visit. “Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present,” staff said, adding that they were shocked by the situation.

BAPS, which describes itself on its website as a “spiritual, volunteer-driven fellowship dedicated to improving society” through Hindu values, consecrated its first major temple in France on Sunday in the suburbs of Paris. The organization has temples in major cities around the world, including London, Los Angeles and Sydney.

In a statement on X, the BAPS temple in Paris said the Eiffel Tower visit was “arranged in conjunction with the Eiffel Tower team at the start of normal opening hours to avoid disrupting or inconveniencing others.” It apologized “for any pain or inconvenience caused,” adding, “we believe in the universal values of mutual respect and service.” Al Jazeera reported that BAPS also wrote: “To the best of our knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower.”

The incident drew swift criticism from French officials. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire said an investigation would be launched “as soon as possible.”

“I am taking note of the anger expressed by the employees of the Eiffel Tower, and I want to tell them that their discontent is legitimate,” he wrote on X. “Equality between women and men will never stop at the foot of our historical monuments, nor anywhere in this city. It must be applied everywhere, for everyone.”

Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of France’s National Assembly, wrote: “Welcoming others never means giving up our values. In France, women are fully present in public life. No one tells them to become invisible.” She also said: “I refuse to allow women to be compelled to step aside in order to meet the demands of foreign visitors.”

French hard-right leader Marine Le Pen said, “In France, we will never accept that the presence of women be ‘limited’.” Former centre-right Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said, “In France, no culture, no belief, no worship, nothing nor anyone can come to dictate to women their place.”