Unions allege women on the monument’s staff were sidelined during the visit, which the group has disputed
A visit to the Eiffel Tower by a Hindu group has sparked a political row in France after female employees at the monument said they were moved from their posts, and in some cases, replaced by men while the delegation was on site.
The group from the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) visited the Paris landmark on Saturday. Eiffel Tower employees walked out on Monday in protest, closing the monument for a day, before it reopened on Tuesday.
France’s CGT trade union said female employees and contractors were told not to enter or cross certain areas in the tower during the group’s visit. Some were allegedly asked to leave their workstations and move elsewhere, while others were replaced by male colleagues.
Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), the company that manages and operates the monument acknowledged that the visiting group had requested arrangements limiting “interactions with women.” In a kind of mea culpa, it said the conditions “should not have been accepted.”
