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The Eiffel Tower is set to reopen on Tuesday after staff staged a walk-out the day before over the removal of women colleagues during a visit by a Hindu religious group which later apologised.
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The operating company that runs the Paris landmark, SETE, acknowledged that the Hindu delegation had requested the visit be organised so as to limit “interactions with women” and said that “these conditions should not have been accepted.”
It said the landmark was due to reopen on Tuesday following a meeting between staff and management.
The Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) spiritual movement apologised for “any pain or inconvenience caused” by the incident.
“To the best of our knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower,” the organisation wrote on X.
“Due to the size of our delegation, the visit was arranged in conjunction with the Eiffel Tower team at the start of normal operating hours to avoid disrupting or inconveniencing others.”
Eiffel Tower staff said in a statement that it condemned “professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex” during the visit by the delegation.
“Instructions were given to female employees of the Eiffel Tower and to female employees of contractors to make themselves invisible in order to welcome this delegation,” the staff said in their statement, adding they were shocked to have been put in such a situation.
“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.”
Paris’ Deputy Mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, promised an investigation “as soon as possible.”
Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly, condemned the incident on Monday.
“I refuse to accept that women should be told to step aside to meet the demands of foreign visitors,” she said.
“Welcoming others never means giving up our values. In France, women are fully present in public life. No one tells them to become invisible there.”
The Eiffel Tower’s website said the landmark was closed on Monday due to “exceptional circumstances.”
It advised visitors with tickets to check their emails and apologised for the inconvenience.
Additional sources • AFP
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