Eiffel Tower closes after protest over gender-based outsourcing of female employees

At the weekend, female staff were temporarily withdrawn from the Eiffel Tower in Paris at the request of a religious group of visitors. Employees then stopped work for a day in protest, and the French landmark remained closed on Monday. A Hindu group from India had requested that female employees temporarily not work at the tourist attraction. After the one-day strike, the Paris landmark is scheduled to reopen as usual this Tuesday.

Eiffel Tower employees criticized "official instructions" that resulted in female employees "being excluded, replaced and rendered invisible because of their gender" during the visit of the Hindu group Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (Baps) on Saturday.

While the Eiffel Tower's homepage spoke of "operational reasons", the newspaper Le Parisien reported, with reference to employees, that the female staff had been withdrawn on Saturday at the request of around 100 members of a Hindu religious community during a visit to the third floor of the Eiffel Tower. The group was then accompanied by exclusively male staff.

The Eiffel Tower's operating company, Sete, later said that the Hindu delegation had asked that the visit be organized in such a way that "interactions with women" would be limited. “These conditions” “should not have been accepted.”

Mayor Grégoire calls the action “unacceptable”

The incident sparked outrage in the French capital. The mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, wrote on the online service X that it was "unacceptable" that the management of the Eiffel Tower had agreed to the delegation's conditions.

"We will clarify what happened and draw the necessary conclusions," said Sete President Ariel Weil to the AFP news agency. Weil, who is also mayor of the central Paris district, showed understanding for the employees' reaction. »No religious reason can justify a distinction based on gender or any other discriminatory approach when welcoming visitors. What is needed now is clarity,” Weil wrote on X.

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