Eiffel Tower closes after staff strike over claims women were sidelined during Hindu group’s visit
The Eiffel Tower in Paris was closed to visitors Monday after employees went on strike over claims that female staff were told to keep out of sight during a delegation visit by a Hindu religious group. The dispute immediately drew sharp criticism from French officials and reopened a sensitive national conversation about religious requests and gender equality in public spaces.
Around 100 members of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a global Hindu organization headquartered in Ahmedabad, India, visited the landmark on Saturday. A day later, the group inaugurated a new temple in Paris. BAPS describes itself as a volunteer-driven spiritual fellowship that promotes faith, service and global harmony.
Diane Davoine, a union representative for Eiffel Tower staff, said women were asked to leave their posts so men could take over during the delegation’s visit. “That absolutely does not go down well with employees, with women obviously, who are all humiliated by what happened, by the way some were treated,” she told reporters.
SETE, the company that operates the Eiffel Tower, acknowledged that the delegation had requested a visit that limited “interactions with women,” French broadcaster BFMTV reported. The operator conceded that those conditions should not have been accepted, but did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire said an investigation had been launched into the claims. “It is not acceptable that such conditions can be tolerated,” he wrote on X. “These are neither my values, nor those that the Eiffel Tower should uphold, where everyone should be able to move about and act freely, without distinction between women and men.”
Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for gender equality and the fight against discrimination, was equally blunt. “In France, gender equality is neither negotiable nor subject to varying standards,” she wrote on X. “It is a principle, and there are no exceptions to it.”
In a statement of its own, BAPS did not directly address the staff allegations. The group said it took the concerns “very seriously” and that the visit had been arranged “in coordination with the Eiffel Tower team at the start of normal opening hours” to avoid disrupting other visitors. “To the best of our knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower,” it said. “Nevertheless, we sincerely apologize for any pain or inconvenience caused.”
The temple opening capped several days of BAPS events in and around Paris. The organization said more than 5,500 devotees from around the world took part in a boat procession on the River Seine, and a separate procession in Bussy-Saint-Georges was led by women and girls.
News of the tower’s closure dominated online discussion in India, where BAPS is based and widely known for its ornate temples worldwide. Some social media users questioned why the monument’s management accepted the reported request to keep female employees out of sight. Others said the episode had damaged both India’s credibility and the public image of Hinduism.
In France, the controversy touched a deeper historical nerve. The country’s constitutional model of secularism, rooted in the French Revolution, has long shaped expectations about how religious traditions should remain separate from public institutions. French feminists also won landmark campaigns for suffrage, reproductive rights and workplace equality, and in 2024 France became the first country in the world to guarantee abortion rights in its constitution.
The questions exposed by the incident reach beyond France. Hinduism is widely considered the world’s oldest living religion and the third largest, with more than a billion followers. Its traditions revere goddesses such as Saraswati, Kali and Lakshmi, yet disputes over women’s access to temples and religious rituals have persisted. In a landmark 2018 ruling, India’s Supreme Court struck down a centuries-old ban on women of menstrual age entering the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala, calling the restriction discriminatory and unconstitutional.
Whether the request came directly from BAPS or was amplified by the tower’s management, officials in Paris have made clear that no version of the episode is acceptable. The strike has turned that principle into a very public stand.