UN distances itself from International Women’s Day website winning corporate partnerships

Sainsbury's, Barclays and University College London have all drawn on themes created by IWD site run by London business with no link to UN

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.