There are witch hunts in part of Sub-Saharan Africa. India is another place that still practices witch hunts. In 2010, India had an 150 and 200 women killed during witch hunts.
Historically, approximately 75-80% of those tried for witchcraft were women. This disparity can be attributed to societal views that often associated women with witchcraft, particularly during periods of heightened superstition and persecution, such as the European witch hunts and the Salem witch trials. Women were frequently seen as more susceptible to temptation and thus more likely to engage in witchcraft.
Misogyny played a central role in the witch hunts by reinforcing societal fears and stereotypes about women, particularly those who were seen as independent or nonconforming. Women were often scapegoated for societal problems, leading to accusations of witchcraft as a means of controlling and punishing them. This reflects broader patriarchal structures that sought to suppress female agency and maintain male dominance, resulting in widespread persecution and violence against women throughout history. Ultimately, the witch hunts served to entrench misogynistic attitudes and perpetuate gender-based discrimination.
Although it is generally thought that the witch hunts were directed at women, the idea may not be entirely true. The entire membership of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon was destroyed in one of the "witch hunts" and they were all male. They were also inordinately wealthy and powerful. The witch hunts, started as a true attempt to weed out the "undesirable" element within the "faithful". It turned out to be quite lucrative for the crown heads, church and the gentry who ended up confiscating the assets and property of the accused. Is was very rare for women in those times legally own much of anything, so they were not the first choice of targets. As the "witch" hysteria" spread, the disliked, envied, or unwanted members of society started to fall victim to the purges. A masculine slanted church did tend to number women in the undesirable. It is a medical, scientifically proven fact that there are more women in the world than there are men, and that women tend to out-live men as a general rule. So, if an area is cleaning out the dead wood, getting rid of the disliked and/or disenfranchised there will be what appears to be a disproportionate number of women caught in the "nets". This is not to say that women were not victimised, because they were. Widows, spinsters and single women had no male "head of the house" to protect them, so they fell easily to the hunts, but I do not believe the witch hunts were completely motivated by misogyny.
Women. In the middle ages, they were generally considered to be far more vulnerable to evil and corruption than men, which led to the vast majority of the people killed during the witch hunts to be female. Theoritically though, nobody was safe from being accused of witchcraft.
Witch hunts and accusations were notably common in Europe and colonial America from the late 15th to the 18th centuries, fueled by social, political, and religious tensions. Thousands of individuals, predominantly women, were accused of witchcraft, leading to trials and executions, such as the infamous Salem witch trials in 1692. The phenomenon reflected deep-seated fears and societal scapegoating rather than actual evidence of witchcraft. While the intensity of witch hunts varied by region and time, they represented a significant aspect of historical persecution.
If you are speaking of the European Witch Hunts, there was no one person who began it. The Witch Hunts were based off of fear of people who believed in things that were "strange" and "foreign" to them. This led to accusations and executions of mostly women who were poor and single.However, a couple of people who did greatly contribute to the European Witch Hunts were Sprenger and Kraemer, the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum. This gave a concept of the witches that greatly supported the already widespread witch hunt.However, Europe was not the first to bring forth the witch hunts. Socery and Witchcraft have been put into law as early as ancient Egypt and Babylonia.
Joan Waterhouse was an English woman who was accused of witchcraft in the early 17th century. She faced a trial in 1612 during the height of witch hunts in England, where she was ultimately convicted. Waterhouse was executed by hanging, reflecting the intense fear and superstition surrounding witchcraft during that period. Her case is part of the broader narrative of witch trials that often involved accusations against women, leading to tragic outcomes.
In an historical perspective, it was the search, or hunting of witches or evidence of witchcraft that in some instances were actually legally sanctioned searches that led to the arrest and trials of many individuals many of whom were executed in horrible ways. Many of these actual witch hunts were fueled by mass hysteria and panic that led to mob lynches. This period of witch hunts spanned the late 1400's up until the 1700's where hundreds of thousands of men and women were executed for witch craft. Before Arthur Miler wrote the play The Crucible, there does not seem to be another historical event ever to using witch hunts as a political or social metaphor. Miller used his own experiences with the House on Un-American Activities Committee, (HUAC), and paralleled it to the Salem witch hunts of 1692. The Crucible was first performed in New York in 1953. Since that day the term witch hunt has come to mean: Searching out and harassing dissenters.
There are no official statistics on what percentage of women are prostitutes in the US. Prostitution is illegal in most of the US, which makes it difficult to accurately track this information. Additionally, many individuals involved in prostitution may do so covertly, further complicating efforts to estimate the percentage of women involved.
Germany is often cited as the country where the most witches were burned at the stake during the witch hunts of the late medieval and early modern periods. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of people, primarily women, were executed for witchcraft in German territories, particularly during the 16th and 17th centuries. The intensity of the witch hunts varied by region, but Germany's persecution was notably severe compared to other countries. Other countries, like France and England, also had witch trials, but the scale in Germany was particularly high.
Women, because women think there tough and dont know how much it will hurt to get hit by a man.