A/HRC/4/34 page 18 2. Orientalizing culture28 46. When conceptualizing culture in the context of women’s rights violations, the notion of culture is frequently truncated in two steps: leaving aside the artistic realm, culture is often defined as a characteristic of non-Western persons only, and in a second step, the notion of culture is mystified and further reduced to its symbolic, ritualized or supposedly “traditional” manifestations.29 47. In Western countries, distinct cultural norms that define gender relations are often not questioned or even perceived as culture. In many European countries, for instance, half-day schooling and rigid shop hours remain in place, which presume that “someone” can take care of children and the shopping during regular working hours. These seemingly trivial cultural practices complement gender ideologies that prioritize women’s reproductive roles and reinforce, albeit in discrete forms, women’s subordination. This helps to explain why a significant number of women in the West, despite their advances in the public sphere, still encounter intimate partner violence.30 48. Other seemingly non-gendered practices, such as the gun culture, also have consequences for gender-based violence. For instance, in 2003, 50 per cent of female homicide victims in the United States of America were shot and killed with a gun.31 Women in the United States of America are 11 times more likely than in other high-income countries to be murdered through the use of a firearm.32 Yet, the culture of legal and widespread gun ownership, constitutionally entrenched, retains majority support. Throughout the Western world, the widespread portrayal of women as sexual objects in the media and unrealistic female beauty ideals that trigger harmful self-imposed practices, which may result in life-threatening diseases such as anorexia or bulimia, are rarely seen as cultural phenomena, but are regarded as questions of market dynamics and free choice. 28 Orientalism, a concept critically examined by the late Edward Said, is a manner of regularized writing, vision and study dominated by imperatives, perspectives and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the “Orient”. It is the image of the “Orient” expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship (Cf. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York, Pantheon, 1978). 29 A.M. Tripp, “Conflicting Visions of Community and Citizenship”. In M. Molyneux and S. Razavi (eds.), Gender Justice, Democracy and Rights (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 413-440. 30 See note 20 above. 31 Violence Policy Center, “When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2003 Homicide Data (2005). Available at: http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2005.pdf. 32 David Hemenway, Tomoko Shinoda-Tagawa and Matthew D. Miller, 2002, “Firearm Availability and Female Homicide Victimization Rates among 25 Populous High-Income Countries”, Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association (2002). See also: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/[ress04172002.html.