Staff at the Eiffel Tower in Paris went on strike on Monday, "shocked" by the exclusion of female employees during a private visit by a Hindu delegation days earlier, according to staff and management.
In a statement issued by the CGT trade union, staff condemned "workplace instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and rendered invisible on the basis of their gender".
"Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men," the statement read. "And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present."
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The visit coincided with a cultural boat procession on the Seine organised by the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) spiritual movement.
BAPS, which is close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling conservative Hindu nationalist party, consecrated its first major temple in France on Sunday, near Paris.
The operating company that runs the Eiffel Tower, SETE, said the delegation had requested that the visit be organised in such a way as to limit "interactions with women" and acknowledged that "these conditions should not have been accepted".
The conditions "were not in line with SETE's values, nor with the principles of equality between men and women," the company said, promising to accept the "consequences".
Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire expressed support for the strike in a post on X, describing the exclusion of female workers as "unacceptable" and contrary to the "values that the Eiffel Tower stands for".
The Tower, which receives nearly seven million visitors a year according to its website, was closed all day on Monday, but will open as normal on Tuesday according to a staff representative.
"We are going to shed light on what happened, and we will draw the necessary conclusions," SETE president Ariel Weil, who is also an elected official in Paris, told reporters.
French Equality Minister Aurore Bergé reacted angrily to the incident, writing on X: "In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic."
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, an early frontrunner in next year's presidential election, also weighed in, saying France would "never accept that women's presence be 'limited'."
Former PM Gabriel Attal, who is also running for the presidency, said that "in France, no culture, no belief, no religion, nothing and no one can come and dictate to women what their place should be".
(the broadcaster with AFP)
