Key Points
Eiffel Tower employees staged a protest after female staff were reportedly asked to leave their posts during a visit by BAPS, whose monks follow a strict celibacy rule limiting contact with women.
The Eiffel Tower's operating company acknowledged the arrangement should never have been approved, calling it inconsistent with its values and gender equality principles.
Political figures including Michel Barnier and Valérie Pécresse condemned the incident, with Paris's mayor announcing an investigation into how the arrangement was approved.
STAFF OF PARIS’S EIFFEL TOWER MONUMENT staged a walkout on Monday, September 7, 2026, after female staff members were allegedly sidelined and removed from work duties during a visit of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) — a hindu spiritual group — two days earlier. Members of the religious delegation reportedly asked female staff not to be “seen” during their visit to Paris's iconic historic monument — with which the Eiffel Tower’s management authority complied. As agitated staff members protested, the Eiffel tower was temporarily closed for visitors on Monday. This incident has sparked massive backlash against BAPS and drawn the opinion of several French statesmen.
The Eiffel Tower is managed by the Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), a public-private company where the City of Paris holds 99% of the stakes.
The delegation of over 100 members affiliated to the Hindu religious group, Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), paid a visit to the Eiffel tower on Saturday, September 5, 2026. As per French media reports, the religious delegation made a request to limit “visual contact” with the female staff as BAPS monks are strictly celibate, which involves prohibiting any interaction with women. Consequently, female staff members were directed to leave their assigned workstations, avoid certain areas, and in some cases were replaced by male colleagues.
“As the delegation passed through, women were asked to leave their workstations so that men could take their places,” said staff union representative Diane Davoine in a statement given to news agency Reuters. Davoine continued that as tensions between the Eiffel Tower management authority and staff escalated, employees held a meeting on Monday and staged a walkout in protest.
As per French journalist Laurent Valdiguié, reporting for Marianne newspaper, Eiffel Tower’s official website says that the monument’s Monday opening was “delayed for operational reasons,” but the real reason for the monument’s closure was the protest movement organized by employees.
Condemning the revised work arrangements to accommodate the BAPS delegation, Eiffel Tower’s female staff argued that the decision was “highly discriminatory” and “an affront to gender equality.” The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) — France’s largest trade and labor union — criticized the arrangements and stated that female employees were effectively pushed out of their normal duties. In a statement given to news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Eiffel Tower staff denounced the “professional instructions which have led female employees to be sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex.”
In response to the growing backlash, SETE issued a public apology and invited staff workers for discussions. The authority acknowledged that BAPS’s request to limit interactions with female staff was compiled with, but remarked that such a decision should never have been approved in the first place.
Prior to this visit, the delegation representatives had asked the Eiffel Tower Operating Company (SETE) to organize their spiritual representative's visit in a way that limited his interactions with women. These conditions should not have been accepted. They are inconsistent with SETE's values, as well as with the principles of gender equality and neutrality that must govern the organization of visits to the monument.Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE), Management Authority of Eiffel Tower
After the management apologized to the staff, the Eiffel Tower resumed its normal operations from Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
Mayor of Paris City, Emmanuel Grégoire, deeply criticized this decision and stating that such an action does not reflect the values that he and the monument uphold. In an X statement posted on September 7, 2026, the mayor remarked that both men and women should be able to move about and act freely, and promised to launch an investigation into this matter.
The Eiffel tower and BAPS incident has drawn the attention of several French statesmen who have criticized the monument management authority’s decision to limit the visibility of female employees. Member of parliament for Paris's 2nd constituency, Michel Barnier stated that it is “utterly unacceptable that an order aimed at removing women from this space could have been given.” “In France, it is not practices imported from elsewhere that dictate to women how they dress or exist in public spaces. We do not hide women. We do not erase them," he stated on X.
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Valérie Pécresse, the president of the Île-de-France region, expressed her shock after learning that the BAPS’s delegation visit to the Eiffel tower, organized by Atout France, involved female employees being excluded from their routine work duties. In a statement posted on X, she asserted that that practice is contrary to the laws of the Republic. “I personally informed the representatives of BAPS in France that such practices were contrary to the laws of the Republic,” Pécresse wrote on X.
In a statement posted on their social media handles, BAPS offered their apologies to the people who “may have been hurt or inconvenienced” by their visit, and expressed their “commitment to the universal values of mutual respect and service to others.”
The BAPS delegation was in France to celebrate the inauguration of the Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir in Paris — France’s first traditional Hindu stone temple.
(Edited by Agniva Ray)
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