Paris landmark: Strike at the Eiffel Tower after excluding female employees

dpa/afp | Because female staff were said to have been temporarily withdrawn from the Eiffel Tower in Paris at the request of a religious group of visitors, employees stopped work on Monday in protest. The landmark remained closed throughout the day.

While the Eiffel Tower's homepage spoke of "operational reasons", the newspaper Le Parisien reported, citing employees, that female staff had been withdrawn from the third floor on Saturday at the request of around 100 members during the visit of the Hindu group Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (Baps). The group was accompanied by exclusively male staff.

Eiffel Tower employees condemned “service instructions” that resulted in female employees being “excluded, replaced and made invisible because of their gender.”

The Eiffel Tower's operating company, Sete, said the Hindu delegation had asked that the visit be organized in a way that would limit "interactions with women." “These conditions” “should not have been accepted”. “We will clarify what happened and draw the necessary conclusions,” said Sete President Ariel Weil to the AFP news agency. He is also mayor of the central Paris district.

Paris' mayor Emmanuel Grégoire showed understanding for the staff's protest. "Equality between women and men will never end at the foot of our historical monuments, nor in any other place in this city. It must apply everywhere, for everyone," said the socialist. He will start an investigation as soon as possible. He wrote on the online service X that it was “unacceptable” that the management of the Eiffel Tower had agreed to the terms of the delegation.

The conservative president of the capital region, Valérie Pécresse, also expressed shock that during an organized tour of the Eiffel Tower, “a Hindu delegation, which included clergy, asked to exclude female employees from their tour.”

The conservative former Prime Minister Michel Barnier reacted indignantly. “In France, it is not foreign customs that dictate how women should dress or behave in public spaces,” Barnier wrote. "Women are not hidden. They are not ignored. They are respected and their freedom is defended. We demand an explanation from the company that operates the Eiffel Tower."

There was initially conflicting information about the reopening of the Eiffel Tower. DPA said the timing was unclear, AFP wrote on Tuesday. According to its website, the tower receives nearly seven million visitors annually.

Baps is close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's conservative, Hindu nationalist party. She inaugurated her first large temple in France on Sunday near Paris.