New Delhi: The Eiffel Tower was closed to the public on Monday after staff staged a strike in protest over the treatment of female employees during a visit by a Hindu religious delegation. Women workers at the site were reportedly asked to leave their workstations or stay out of sight during the visit, according to workers and management.
According to reports, a group of around 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) was visiting as part of events linked to the inauguration of a new temple near Paris. Union representative Diane Davoine said women were instructed to step aside so male colleagues could take their places as the delegation passed through.
“During the visit of this delegation, women were asked to leave their places of work in order to place men there,” Davoine told Reuters. She also said management had apologised 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,” she said.
She added: “Tensions mounted over the weekend, so this morning, the employees decided to meet: first, to open a dialogue with management, and second, to ensure that women are never treated this way at the company again.”
In a statement, staff condemned “professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex”. Some workers were reportedly told to withdraw to other areas or avoid certain zones while the group was present. The delegation was accompanied only by male staff on parts of the visit, including the third floor.
The Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), which operates the monument, confirmed that the delegation had requested that the visit be organised to limit “interactions with women”. SETE said those conditions “should not have been accepted” and that management had apologised to staff. SETE president Ariel Weil said the company would investigate and “draw the necessary conclusions”.
Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire called the arrangement “unacceptable”.
“It is not acceptable that such conditions can be tolerated,” he wrote in a post on X. “These are neither my values, nor those that the Eiffel Tower should uphold, where everyone—regardless of gender—should be able to move about and act freely, without distinction between women and men.”
“I refuse to allow women to be compelled to step aside in order to meet the demands of foreign visitors,” Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly, wrote in a post on X. “In France, women fully occupy public spaces. No one dictates to them that they must become invisible there.”
The BAPS temple in Paris later issued a statement saying it took the concerns “very seriously”.
“To the best of our knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower,” the statement read. “Nevertheless, we sincerely apologise for any pain or inconvenience caused.”
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)