Eiffel Tower chief to quit after female staff replaced by men during religious visit

The chief executive of the company that runs the Eiffel Tower will step down after a backlash over female staff being replaced by male colleagues during a visit by a Hindu religious group.

Patrick Branco Ruivo, who has been director general of the Paris landmark since 2018, will leave his job at the end of the year, the company SETE said in a statement.

It said an internal investigation found that "operational flaws and shortcomings" in organising the visit led to the "unacceptable" removal of female staff.

They were replaced by male colleagues as a delegation of around 100 people linked to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) group visited the Eiffel Tower earlier this month.

BAPS - a movement whose beliefs originate in the 18th Century - strictly separates men and women, including in temple activities and building entrances.

At the time, SETE said the Hindu delegation had requested that the visit be organised so as to limit "interactions with women" and said that "these conditions should not have been accepted".

A staff union representative said "women were asked to leave their places of work" and felt "humiliated".

Staff at the monument said female employees were also "instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present".

The visit led to the closure of the tower as staff went on strike to show their outrage and politicians condemned the incident.

Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of France's National Assembly, said after the visit: "I refuse to allow women to be compelled to step aside in order to meet the demands of foreign visitors."

The Socialist mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Gregoire, called it an "absurd, unjust and unacceptable decision" and ordered two separate investigations.

SETE chair Ariel Weil said on Tuesday that he had requested measures and training programmes promoting gender equality to be implemented.

"The coming months will allow us to prepare for the leadership transition under the best possible conditions," he said.