Gendercide In Seventeenth Century Europe

This essay will asses how appropriate the label ‘gendercide’ is in reference to the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In order to do this, this essay will discuss in detail how ‘witches were found and tried, what exactly a ‘witch’ was, and what their punishments were. Witch-hunts were widespread in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe had seen many changes within societies; this was mainly due to religion, neighbourly relations and economic motivations. The reformation, and then after the counter reformation took place during this period and people were changing their religious loyalties, this caused great tensions between people in Europe as religion was profoundly important to them at the time. Witch-hunts occurred within both faiths, in Catholic and Protestant countries, and the belief that witches existed extended throughout all social classes. Scotland had one of the largest witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. To label The ‘witch hunts’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a ‘gendercide’ would be very appropriate. The number of people killed during the witch-hunts is not definite, many historians argue over the figures, however it is believed to lye …show more content…
They were easily targeted in the society in which the witch hunts occurred. Even today witches are presumed to be women, when people dress up for Halloween, we don’t associate men with the witch costumes, in films and tv shows it is the same, frankly witches are perceived as women. The treatment of women during the witch-hunts, which have been described in this essay are harrowing, and the thought of such treatment toward women seems inhumane in todays world. The witch hunts could not be described more accurately, than being a mass murder of women- The witch hunts were a brutal persecution of the female sex, and as proven in this essay, nothing short of a