The Eiffel Tower reopened to visitors on Tuesday morning after a walkout by staff who said female employees had been removed from public view during a weekend visit by a Hindu religious delegation, an episode that triggered an apology, a promised investigation and a rare shutdown of one of the world's most visited monuments.
Employees at the Paris landmark said that during Saturday's visit by the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu organization known as BAPS, staff were instructed to withdraw female workers from certain posts, replace them with male colleagues, and keep them from crossing paths with the delegation. Workers described the arrangement in a statement as leaving female employees "sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex", prompting them to walk off the job on Monday and shutter the tower to visitors for the day.
An apology, and an admission
SETE, the company that operates the tower, acknowledged that the request to limit "interactions with women" should never have been accepted. BAPS, for its part, apologized "for any pain or inconvenience caused," while maintaining that no one had been prevented from accessing the tower and that the visit had been organized at the start of normal operating hours specifically to avoid inconveniencing other guests.
The episode quickly drew political attention. Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the French National Assembly, said "welcoming others never means giving up our values," adding: "In France, women are fully present in public life. No one tells them to become invisible there." Paris deputy mayor Emmanuel Grégoire promised a formal investigation into how the arrangement was approved in the first place, and management met with staff representatives on Monday before agreeing to reopen the tower the following morning.
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.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, President of the French National Assembly
By Tuesday morning, visitors were again passing through security at the base of the tower, with normal queues reported by mid-morning. But the dispute has left lingering questions about how private groups can shape public access to state-linked monuments, and about the internal approval process at SETE that allowed the request to move forward without apparently being challenged beforehand.
France has strict laws guaranteeing gender equality in public services, and commentators noted that the incident touched a particularly sensitive nerve given the country's long-running debates over religious accommodation in public spaces. Grégoire's inquiry is expected to examine whether other private events at the tower have included similar conditions, and whether SETE's booking procedures need to be revised to prevent a repeat. For now, tower staff have secured a public acknowledgment that the arrangement should not have been made — a resolution that, for many employees, still falls short of the accountability they had walked out to demand.
