Eiffel Tower Workers Strike in Outrage After Female Staffers Ordered to Leave Their Posts, Replaced by Men

The Eiffel Tower closed Monday due to strikes over outrage that female workers were allegedly ordered to leave and stay out of sight to comply with a special request from a traditional Hindu delegation that visited the monument over the weekend, reported Le Parisien. By Tuesday, the monument had reopened, and a representative of the Hindu religious organization BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, which has close ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist party, issued an apology.

But it was too late to quell a viral storm over news that managers of France’s most iconic landmark appear to have agreed to effectively discriminate against its women workers. “Orders were given to sideline female staff at the Eiffel Tower, and female workers at contractor companies, [who were] replaced and made invisible because of their gender,” staffers who refused to work on Monday told Le Parisien. The situation “is serious and profoundly contrary to values of equality and non-discrimination,” they added. “The Eiffel Tower is the symbol of France, and we believe it must also be exemplary in the values it projects and the way it treats employees.”

Left-leaning Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said he agreed with protesting workers and announced the launch of an investigation into the incident. “Equality between women and men will never stop at the foot of our historical monuments, nor anywhere in this city,” he wrote on social media.

On Saturday morning, leading members of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha were given a private visit to the Eiffel Tower’s second floor, to celebrate the inauguration of its first major temple in France, located east of Paris in Bussy-Saint-Georges. Prior to this, the delegation reportedly asked management at the monument to “limit” the group’s “interactions with women.” Another worker at the monument told Le Parisien that women were specifically asked to be “put aside,” to avoid “using the term ‘hidden.’”

Eiffel Tower management responded by asking female workers to leave their posts and to stay away from areas where the religious group was visiting. Men were then brought in to replace the women workers, and they escorted the BAPS delegates instead, according to staff.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum have taken to social media to express their shock. “In France, we’ll never accept that the presence of women be ‘limited,’” stated far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Today, Ariel Weil, president of Société d’exploitation de la tour Eiffel, the city-owned organization that manages the Eiffel Tower, called the removal of female workers “totally unacceptable,” while speaking on BFMTV. He promised his own investigation into who was responsible for what he described as a likely “zealous” interpretation of the Hindu delegation’s requests. Meanwhile, in a statement on social media, the Hindu organization BAPS apologized for “anyone who may have been hurt or was inconvenienced.” The group also insisted that, “to the best of our knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower.”