But I find it flabbergasting that in 2026 someone in the management thought it'd be okay to tell female staff to hide, just because some delegation demanded it. But for the tech-relevancy angle; They could've asked AI "Would this be fine?".
(Untested, presumably the AI would say "Merde! Non!")
Whether it be corporates, Eiffel Tower management, or religious groups, I guess the new norm is - better to ask for forgiveness.
I am Indian origin so full disclosure done. I saw a picture of the group's 93 year old head in ascetic robes, the one who does not see women, have a picture below Eiffel Tower for memories. Sir, what part of asceticism do you teach?
Maybe 93 years of not seeing women and touching one might pose danger to their health? I assume if the old man accidentally bump the lady, the heart would beat so fast and blood rushing away from brain to some place down there which might kill him? Probably staying in cave or all-male monastery would be a wiser choice.
To play devils advocate: Isn't it that the management had to choose between two potential problematic decisions? What if the management declined the hindu request and then the hindus made a big fuss about it? Wouldn't people scream "how could they think that discriminating the hindu religion would be a good decision?!?".
France has a storied history of resisting efforts to impose non-western, extremist beliefs on them
You could start with Charlie Hebdo for an idea of how it might be received if a religious extremist group wanted to fuss over hiding French women from the public.
> But I find it flabbergasting that in 2026 someone in the management thought it'd be okay to tell female staff to hide, just because some delegation demanded it
You're looking at the results of years of indoctrination related to the intersectional pyramid of oppression. On that pyramid you'll quickly find that people of colour practising an exotic religion end up above female employees so (most likely white, male) management thought it better to risk giving in to the former's request out of fear of being called 'racist' or something related. Sad, stupid, silly and totally not fitting Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité but that's what this type of thinking leads to.
As to the answer given by any 'AI' that depends on whether it has been trained to follow the dictats of intersectionality. Unfortunately this seems to be the case [1,2,3] in at least some western models which claim that a woman using violence against a man to prevent a nuclear apocalypse is fine but disagree with a man using violence against a woman for the same purpose, which also refuse to 'misgender' someone to stop the apocalypse, etc. This is not the natural result of ingesting training data but points at a direct effort to instil these values into the model leading to rather crude and easily dismissed results.
As a thought experiment, perhaps someone there thought not fulfilling the Indian group's request would be seen as insensitive.
I suppose the decisionmaker needs to know what societal values one has to uphold, and in which order of importance. As a wild example, if the group had demanded the women walk around in the nude, because of their religion, it'd be obvious to say no because it'd violate so many of the employees' values.
Yes, it boils down to a conflict between two cultures. And when you visit a place, the expectation should be that you will respect local culture. If you cannot do that, stay home.
What if the Hindus had said "we are vegans, please don't serve us meat" - probably reasonable enough, although I seem to recall some rightwingers getting angry about some other occasion where only vegetarian food was to be served.
Yeah, as a host I'd be fine with meeting their dietary restrictions; but would refuse their with staff gender restrictions. Somehow the management company didn't know where this acceptability border lied.
> Company head Ariel Weil told the AFP news agency that SETE will "draw the necessary conclusions" from the case. Weil himself is an elected official in Paris.
Religious cults have no business going to the Eiffel Tower in the first place. In general I would consider all religious cults a security risk. They also are likely using public donations to fund their frivolous outing.
All 3 things are so typical:
1) Ascetics living the high life
2) The French striking
3) Europeans throwing modern civil rights under the bus to accommodate foreigners who don't respect women
It is distressing that so many groups, usually calling themselves "ideologies" or "religions" demand that the countries where they happen to be cancel their own values. ESPECIALLY when it comes to values like equality.
In this case equality between men and women, but let's not pretend that for most ideologies that is any more than just one of many inequalities they would like to introduce. Sorry, "to have respected", as if that means anything different.
There's an irony those unions have supported the very politicians who brought the Hindus over who request the women be removed. People forget western culture is a unique culture, and could easily be supplanted.
As others have pointed out though this probably isn't relevant for HN
Fair enough, the apostrophe was incorrect. Everything else you said feels a bit ignorant though, if you want to live in a world where women are banned from working that's your opinion but I will disagree with you.
Let's adapt your own prose to your statement: maybe you claim this because you are "native", and yet at the bottom of the intellectual scale because you are overeducated, who decided his only joy in life is to punch what you consider to be 'down'
What is being "overeducated"? What is exactly your belief that knowing as much stuff as possible is a "bad" thing? And what are you doing on Hacker News then?
And could you point where I do "punch what I consider being down" by wanting to strip them from citizenship and getting rid of them?
"Overeducated" is a tongue-in-cheek reference to your claim that those who disagree with your desired narrative are 'undereducated'. Well, if those people are 'undereducated' it must be that you yourself are 'overeducated' because you clearly 'know' more than is good for you. I had hoped that you would understand this but clearly I was mistaken, a sad thing.
Also, where is the 'hate' you refer to? You might want to be a bit more careful with words, they do have meaning you know. I clearly disagree with most of what you say and you clearly disagree with most of what I say but in contrast to you I do not claim you spout 'hate' - just nonsense. The mere fact that people disagree with you does not make those people 'bad' or 'undereducated' or 'hateful', it might actually mean you simply are wrong. In this case it actually does mean you are wrong, especially with your ludicrous claims about 'brown people are banned from living in France' which also happened to be the claim which made me react to your bout of silliness.
Brown people banned from france?, what are you talking about? Not having women barred from working at a place doesn't ban a group. Also a typo doesn't invalidate a point,not everyone cares if you miss some grammar on a comment.
But I find it flabbergasting that in 2026 someone in the management thought it'd be okay to tell female staff to hide, just because some delegation demanded it. But for the tech-relevancy angle; They could've asked AI "Would this be fine?".
(Untested, presumably the AI would say "Merde! Non!")
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