ISLAMABAD: French capital Paris' social mayor Emmanuel Gregoire has said that an investigation would be launched after the Eiffel Tower management agreed to the removal of female colleagues during a visit by a Hindu religious group, adding that it was "acceptable that such conditions can be tolerated."
Gregoire's comments come after the spiritual movement Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), which is close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling conservative Hindu nationalist party, organized a cultural boat procession on the Seine.
"I am taking note of the anger expressed by the employees of the Eiffel Tower, and I want to tell them that their discontent is legitimate," the mayor said in a post on X.
"These are neither my values, nor those that the Eiffel Tower should uphold, where everyone — regardless of gender — should be able to move about and act freely, without distinction between women and men," Gregoire said
"It is urgent that full light be shed on the facts that led to this mobilization," he said, adding that equality between women and men would never stop at the "foot of our historical monuments, nor anywhere in this city."
"It must be applied everywhere, for everyone," he said.
"I will ensure this, everywhere and without exception. An investigation will be launched as quickly as possible," he added.
The Eiffel Tower was closed on Monday because of a strike by staff over the removal during the visit by the Hindu religious group, workers and management said.
In a statement, Eiffel Tower staff condemned "professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex" during the visit by the delegation.
"Instructions were given to female employees of the Eiffel Tower and to female employees of contractors to make themselves invisible in order to welcome this delegation," the staff said in their statement, adding they were shocked to have been put in such a situation.
"Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present."
The operating company that runs the Paris landmark, SETE, acknowledged that the Hindu delegation had requested the visit be organised so as to limit "interactions with women" and said 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".
"It is clearly not an acceptable practice," SETE president Ariel Weil, who is also a socialist elected official in Paris, told AFP.
"I restate the Eiffel Tower's commitment to republican values and to the equality of men and women."
Hindu nationalist ties
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.
BAPS consecrated its first major temple in France on Sunday, near Paris.
French equality minister Aurore Berge reacted angrily on X.
"In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic," she wrote.
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen also criticised the incident, saying France would "never accept that women's presence be 'limited'".
Gabriel Attal, a centrist rival to become president, 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".