A/HRC/17/26 laws that criminalize all forms of violence against women also serves as a form of structural violence. 28. Societal beliefs that claim that one group of people is superior to another group can be a form of structural violence. Beliefs that perpetuate the notion that males are superior to females, that whites are superior to blacks, that persons without physical or mental impairment are superior to those with disabilities, that one language is superior to another, and that one class position is entitled to rights denied to another, are all factors contributing to structural violence that have become institutionalized forms of multiple and intersecting discrimination in many countries.7 For example, women with disabilities face an intersecting confluence of violence which reflects both gender-based and disability-based violence. 29. Additionally, women’s lack of and/or unequal access to resources may be structurally maintained by institutional factors such as differential inheritance, land tenure and property ownership practices. A woman’s inability to own her own property or land may result from structural factors that contribute to her experiences of interpersonal violence. If a woman is dependent on her spouse or family network for her economic wellbeing, she is at greater risk of vulnerability to violence and also of an inability to escape from harm. 30. Even in contexts where women are able to successfully acquire access to resources such as for example land, they continue to face the challenge of access to other resources for its care. For illustration purposes, we can look at the issue of access to water. Women and their families experience multiple challenges relating to security and health when they have to travel considerable distances and spend several hours a day collecting water, which is often polluted and dangerous to their health and well-being. At the same time they are also at risk of sexual and other forms of violence. Furthermore, with the privatization of water for profit, water has become a commodity for the global market. This is a form of structural violence in that water is being forcibly taken away as a public good, despite the recognition by the United Nations that water is a human right. Such a scenario illustrates both interpersonal and structural violence directly related to survival, bodily integrity and health, as women risk their lives daily for water, which is a basic need. 31. Interpersonal, institutional and structural forms of violence perpetuate gender inequalities, but also racial hierarchies, religious orthodoxies, ethnic group exclusionary practices, and resource allocation that benefit some groups of women at the expense of others. Interventions that seek only to ameliorate the abuse and which do not factor in women’s realities are not challenging the fundamental gender inequalities and discrimination that contribute to the abuse in the first place. 2. Causes 32. According to many researchers there are three broad perspectives for understanding the causes of violence against women: psychological/individual, feminist and societal. All three models seek to explain what may be some correlative aspects of an individual’s likelihood of being at risk of violence, or how some ideological beliefs in a given society can contribute to high levels of violence. However, despite the fact that no single perspective offers a definitive explanation for what causes violence against women, a combination of factors from each perspective may provide some understanding for why so much violence occurs, and how one could think about addressing it. 7 A/CONF.189/PC.3/5 9