Eiffel Tower Shuts After Women Staff "Sidelined" For Hindu Group's Visit - ndtv.com

**Eiffel Tower Shuts After Women Staff “Sidelined” for Hindu Group’s Visit**

Paris’s iconic Eiffel Tower was temporarily closed on Thursday after a protest erupted over the alleged removal of women from the staff roster for a scheduled visit by the Hindu religious organization Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (BAPS). Workers from the tower’s maintenance and hospitality teams, backed by French women’s rights groups, staged a sit‑in at the tower’s base, accusing the management of complying with a request from the visiting delegation to limit female staff presence in certain ceremonial roles. The protest forced the tower’s operators to suspend visitor admissions for several hours, prompting a sharp backlash on social media and in French media outlets that framed the incident as a breach of France’s secular and gender‑equality principles.

The BAPS organization denied any directive to exclude women, issuing a statement that “no access was denied” to its members and that the group respects France’s laws on gender equality. French officials, including the Ministry of Culture, condemned the alleged sidelining and launched an inquiry into the tower’s staffing practices. The French Council of the Hindu Community (CJP) also defended the group, arguing that the incident was being politicised and that the demands of a religious delegation should not be used to fuel “regressive” narratives. Meanwhile, several French trade unions called for stricter enforcement of gender‑parity rules in public institutions.

After several hours of negotiations between the tower’s management, union representatives, and the BAPS delegation, a compromise was reached that allowed the Eiffel Tower to reopen to the public. The agreement stipulated that women staff would be reinstated to their regular duties for the remainder of the visit, and that future events would be coordinated in line with France’s anti‑discrimination statutes. The tower resumed operations by early evening, with officials emphasizing that the incident underscored the need for transparent protocols when hosting foreign cultural and religious groups.