PARIS, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Female employees at the Eiffel Tower were asked to step out of sight during a visit by a Hindu religious delegation \u200cat the weekend, according to union representatives, prompting a staff protest and an \u200cinvestigation by Paris city authorities.<\/p>\n
The monument was closed late on Monday as employees held a meeting over the \u200bincident, which has angered staff and drawn criticism from French politicians.<\/p>\n
The dispute stems from a private visit on Saturday by a delegation of about 100 people linked to BAPS (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha), a Hindu group whose representatives were in France for festivities related to the \u200cinauguration of a Hindu temple \u2060in the Paris suburbs.<\/p>\n
“As the delegation passed through, women were asked to leave their workstations so that men could take their places,” Diane \u2060Davoine, a union representative, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“Tensions mounted over the weekend, so this morning, the employees decided to meet: first, to open a dialogue with management, and second, to ensure that women \u200bare never \u200btreated this way at the company again,” she \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Signs at the base of the \u200ctower on Monday read: “The opening of the Eiffel Tower is delayed for operational reasons.”<\/p>\n
Davoine said management apologised to staff over the incident.<\/p>\n
Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said that an investigation would be launched “as soon as possible”. In a post on social media platform X, he said that he was aware of the employees’ anger and agreed their dissatisfaction was legitimate.<\/p>\n
“It is \u200curgent that all light be shed on the \u200bfacts that led to this protest,” Gregoire wrote.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for \u200bBAPS and SETE, the company operating \u200bthe monument, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
“I refuse \u200cto accept that women should be told \u200bto step aside to \u200bmeet the demands of foreign visitors,” Yael Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly, wrote in a post on X about the incident.<\/p>\n
“Welcoming others never means giving \u200bup our values. In \u200cFrance, women are fully present in public life. No one tells them to \u200bbecome invisible,” she added.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Lewis Macdonald, Clotaire Achi and Michaela Cabrera; Writing \u200bby Makini Brice; Editing by Ros Russell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Female employees at the Eiffel Tower were asked to step out of sight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[46085,46090,46086,966,533,1262,46087,46089,46091,6737,30,186,46088,46092,38953],"class_list":["post-75672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-paris","tag-bochasanwasi-akshar-purushottam","tag-clotaire-achi","tag-diane-davoine","tag-emmanuel-gregoire","tag-gregoire","tag-hindu","tag-lewis-macdonald","tag-makini-brice","tag-michaela-cabrera","tag-monday","tag-paris","tag-reuters","tag-ros-russell","tag-sete","tag-yael-braun-pivet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}