Eiffel Tower chief to step down after female staff told to stay hidden during Hindu group visit

The director general of the Eiffel Tower Operating Company (Sete), Patrick Branco Ruivo, will step down at the end of the year after a row over female staff being ordered to stay out of sight during a visit by the Hindu religious group BAPS, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

The controversy followed the 5 September visit by the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha — including monks and their 93-year-old spiritual leader, Mahant Swami Maharaj — part of a weekend celebrating the inauguration of the group’s first traditional temple in France at Bussy-Saint-Georges, east of Paris.

Sete announced Branco Ruivo’s departure in a statement on Tuesday, saying an internal inquiry had uncovered “a series of problems and shortcomings in the planning of official visits and the organisation of the 5 September visit, which led to the exclusion of female staff on the day of the visit”, creating “an unacceptable situation”. The company admitted the BAPS delegation had requested that “interactions with women” be limited, adding: “These conditions should not have been accepted.”

City hall, which oversees the tower, apologised for failing to observe France’s republican principle of equality.

Tower employees denounced workplace policies that had “led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and rendered invisible because of their sex”. Some were asked to leave their posts and wait in separate rooms, and in some posts women were replaced by men; all female employees were instructed not to pass through or enter certain areas while the delegation was present. The row triggered a one-day staff strike.

BAPS apologised for “any pain or inconvenience caused”, saying the request was made because the monks’ vows forbid contact with women.

Branco Ruivo, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration and a former adviser to ex-Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, had run the tower since November 2018.

Sources

• The Guardian — “Eiffel Tower chief to quit after female staff told to stay hidden during Hindu group visit”