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Nobody owns International Women’s Day, but if you asked the 193 countries, countless businesses and NGOs that mark it each year, they would probably agree it has been popularised, defined and formalised by the United Nations.
The owner of the website “internationalwomensday.com”, a London-based marketing firm, disagrees. By selling merchandise, promoting a £160 lunch to awaken attenders’ “inner goddess” and creating a series of corporate partnerships, it has also seeded its annual themes with British brands and institutions that appear to have mistaken the site for the UN, the Guardian can reveal.
Organisations including Sainsbury’s, Barclays and University College London have all drawn on themes provided by internationalwomensday.com. When contacted by the Guardian, the UN distanced itself from the website, run by a company owned by Glenda Slingsby, a marketing executive.
The internationalwomensday.com site, owned by IWD Support Ltd, formerly Aurora Ventures (Europe) Ltd, has been running for more than two decades. During that time, language that identified the site as the product of a London marketing firm has been largely removed and it appears vague about its ownership and connection with UN-led efforts to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Its homepage says: “Today IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. IWD is not country, group or organization specific.”
Elsewhere on the site, it says: “All IWD activity is valid. IWD is a movement. It belongs to all groups, everywhere.”
UN Women, the entity dedicated to the empowerment of women and girls, which organises an annual international observance of International Women’s Day, told the Guardian it had nothing to do with internationalwomensday.com.
In an email, a spokesperson said: “Your inquiry provides an important opportunity to clarify that UN Women and the United Nations are not affiliated with the website referenced.”
In response to questions from the Guardian, a spokesperson for IWD Support said the website was launched as a not-for-profit in 2001 to promote “the advancement of women’s equality worldwide”. They said the site launched “at a time when IWD had low awareness and since then it has successfully driven engagement by providing free resources and creating a community for women”.
The website sells International Women’s Day merchandise packs that include purple tablecloths, purple “gratitude cards” and purple wristbands for £184 each, and hosts directories for speakers and charities. Each year for the past decade the site has chosen a theme for International Women’s Day, among them Make it Happen for 2015, Accelerate Action for 2025, and Give to Gain for 2026.
UK organisations have used these themes in marketing campaigns related to International Women’s Day, including Sainsbury’s, Barclays, the University of Warwick and UCL’s School of Management.
In 2025, the BBC cited the website as if it operated in an official capacity, saying: “Purple, green and white are the colours of IWD, according to the International Women’s Day website … Purple signifies justice and dignity. Green symbolises hope. White represents purity, albeit a controversial concept.”
The Evening Standard similarly cited the website’s 2025 theme, Accelerate Action, as if it was the UN theme.
A spokesperson for UN Women confirmed that these themes had nothing to do with UN-selected themes, which in 2025 were: “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.”
The spokesperson added: “Each year, a group of global experts determines the official theme for International Women’s Day, which is subsequently communicated through our official channels at the beginning of the year. We encourage all partners to adopt the United Nations theme.”
The UN Women spokesperson also said purple, green and white were not UN-selected colours for the campaign.
In response to queries from the Guardian, the University of Warwick removed a blog post referencing internationalwomensday.com’s 2025 theme. A spokesperson for the university said: “We were not aware of this PR firm or the unofficial capacity of its website. We have inadvertently used its theme Accelerate Action for one of our MBA blogs. This is unfortunate and we have taken down the blog to avoid any further confusion.”
UCL’s school of management also removed a blogpost referencing Accelerate Action in response to a Guardian query, but did not comment. A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said the company had no relationship with Aurora Ventures.
Internationalwomensday.com lists a series of high-profile corporate partnerships, including with the London Eye, the insurance firm MetLife, British Petroleum and the accounting firm Ernst & Young, which was a campaign sponsor for the company in 2017.
The London Eye, MetLife, Ernst & Young and British Petroleum did not respond to queries from the Guardian about these partnerships.
Aurora Ventures, internationalwomensday.com’s corporate owner, appears just twice on its website in its “privacy” and “terms of use” pages. It says the website is provided “as a not-for-profit philanthropic service by Aurora Ventures (Europe) Limited”.
Aurora Ventures is a private company based in London that lists its business activities as “web portals”. It had assets of about £940,000 in 2024 and 2023, and director’s expenses totalling £30,731 in 2024 and £15,182 in 2023. It has listed no charitable contributions on its accounts for the past 10 years.
Slingsby, the majority owner of Aurora Ventures, is from Australia and has worked in London since at least 2000 when she founded Aurora Ventures, then called Busygirl Limited.
The spokesperson for IWD Support said: “The website is one of many groups that now mark the day worldwide. IWD is not owned by one body. The IWD website explains the history of this day and the many groups who are involved, including UN Women, which was established in 2010, nearly a decade after the IWD website was launched.”
