I agree with the idea that these accusations are usually a cover for disenfranchisment, and usually target older and marginalised women.
However, there is also a long history of these accusations targeting knowledgeable women, especially midwives and female medical practitioners. The pushback against women providing healthcare, one of the things studied in medical anthropology (my field!), ties in strongly with this topic.
“No one does more harm to the Catholic Faith than midwives.” - Malleus Maleficarum
In the country where I live, and where my ancestors come from (The former Kingdom of Denmark/Norway, which is what I am referring to when I say “I’d’ve been a goner”), women accused of witchcraft were burned alive or beheaded with state sanction by the Protestant church of Denmark, from 1540 to 1693.
Christian IV of Denmark, was obsessed with witchcraft, and charges and trials primarily took place in rural communities in Jutland. There is a reference to this in the Scandinavian summer solstice celebration, called ‘sankthansaften,‘ where to this day an effigy of a witch is burned on a bonfire.
The last witch burned here with State sanction – 74-year old Anne Palles – was one of many rural women who had a husband predecease her. After that, people resorted to lynch mobs: Dorte Jensdatter was 50, unmarried, and burned alive by her neighbours. Anna Klemens – lynched at the age of 82 – was a beggar. These were definitely marginalised or widowed women, not herbalists.
The Thisted Witch trial, however, was mostly young women, like 27-year-old Maren Christensdatter Spillemand. The Rugård witch trials found young Anne Sørensdatter guilty.
And here I’m arriving at my point: women were also accused of witchcraft here in the sense that they practiced herbal medicine.
“Af jordemødre nævnes nogle i det 17. aarhundrede. 1613 eller snarere 1615 brændtes to hexe i Bergen, hvoraf den ene var jordemoder.” - Danmarks Jormødre
(From the book Denmark’s Midwives, on Midwives being burned for witchcraft in Bergen). See also: Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers.
Now, being myself an atheist, anti-authoritarian, feminist, non-straight woman who is considering going to medical school to be an OB/GYN (a quintuple threat back then), I feel some connection to these histories, a connection I definitely don’t see as ‘disingenuous’; it’s not because I’m gardening and brewing herbal teas.
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