Eiffel Tower chief to step down after female staff were excluded from a visit

The company that manages the Eiffel Tower announced on Tuesday that its director will leave his post at the end of this year, following a dispute sparked by the removal of female employees during a visit by a Hindu religious group.

Patrick Branco Ruivo, who has been the Paris monument’s general director since 2018, will leave his post at the end of the year, after an internal investigation found that “shortcomings and operational problems” in organising the visit led to the “unacceptable removal” of female employees, the company SETE said in a statement.

The removal of the female employees during the visit of the Hindu spiritual movement Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, on September 5, sparked a staff protest and the closure of the monument for a day.

At the time, SETE acknowledged that the Hindu delegation had asked for the visit to be organised in such a way as to limit “interactions with women”, stressing that “these conditions should not have been accepted”.

“The coming months will allow us to prepare the handover of management in the best possible conditions,” said Ariel Weil, chairman of SETE’s board of directors.

He said he had requested the creation of a “special department for protocols”, as well as the implementation of a series of new measures and training programmes to promote gender equality.

The socialist mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Gregoire, had described the removal of the female employees as an “absurd, unjust and unacceptable decision” and had ordered two separate investigations.

Eiffel Tower employees said in a statement that they had been given instructions that led to the “sidelining, replacement and rendering invisible of female employees because of their sex” during the delegation’s visit.