A/HRC/17/26 aspects, both of which must be addressed if the human rights of all women to live free of gender-based violence are to be fully realized. Conceptual problems associated with an incomplete analysis of personhood necessitate the generation of a holistic understanding of an individual woman’s social location and bodily attributes to better understand the scope of vulnerability, risk and consequences of violence, whether interpersonal or structural or both. C. The holistic approach to recognizing women’s rights to be free from discrimination and violence 50. A holistic approach underscores the interdependence and indivisibility of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; it situates violence against women on a continuum; it acknowledges the structural aspects and factors of discrimination, which includes structural and institutional inequalities; and it analyzes social and/or economic hierarchies between women and men and also among women. Thus, it explicitly interrogates the places where violence against women coincides with multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and their attendant inequalities. 51. Adopting a holistic approach to recognizing the human right of all women to be free from violence and discrimination addresses two approaches to analyzing violence against women. First, violence against women constitutes discrimination against women if it has the purpose or effect of targeting women because they are women; second, violence also constitutes discrimination when it is perpetrated with the purpose or effect of targeting identifiable subgroups of women, because their personhood is defined in terms of both their femaleness and other factors such as race, colour, national origin, citizenship, ethnicity, ability, religion/culture, socio-economic, marital, sexual orientation, refugee, or any other status.15 52. The holistic approach considers each woman’s social location and bodily integrity as a starting point for intervention and treatment, and, by doing so, makes clear that gender inequality and gender stratification are but two of the many factors that perpetuate and promote violence against women in all parts of the world. Such an approach counters efforts that focus on violence against women as solely a woman’s issue, as it risks minimizing the role that socio-economic, cultural, religious, racial, ethnic, ability, education, access to citizenship and resource allocation inequalities play in maintaining epidemic levels of violence against women. 53. A holistic approach is based on the acknowledgement that unless women can achieve economic independence or be empowered socially and politically, the human rights they hear about will remain abstract concepts. This is especially true for those women for whom the lack of access to particular economic and social rights, such as the right to land, housing, and food are directly linked to the increased risk of violence.16 54. The systematic nature of violence and its contribution to societal marginalization is often overlooked or not adequately considered in matters of gender-based violence. This could be due to the nature of systematic discrimination and also discourses about identity; whether based on race, ethnicity, national origin, and so on which often negate or ignore systematic power. The different ways in which women may experience violence, particularly intimate and interpersonal violence, depends on how they are positioned within social, economic and cultural hierarchies that prohibit or further compromise certain 15 16 A/CONF.189/PC.3/5 (2001). A/RES/65/187 13