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In the past, the inequality towards women was a large and unprecedented problem, they were required to take care of the respective households they were in, they were normally tasked with domestic activities such as cleaning, cooking, taking care of children etc. Women were also excluded from the right to proper education, and if a woman was seen as educated and intelligent she was seen as a witch and prosecuted in a witch hunt eventually burnt at the staked, especially the case if the woman was unmarried. This is because during that time it was believed that women can not survive or achieve anything without the direct supervision of a man, it was so bad that if a woman was unmarried she only had the option of going under her family or becoming a nun or she won’t be able to survive.

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Women in the 16th century had no rights. Their role in society stayed the same from the time the baby came out of the womb a female to the time she gets buried. Women were meant to meet certain expectations such as being obedient to their husbands, they are expected to be fertile and produce many offsprings. They were meant to take care of the household and every member within it. However, the right to vote was never a choice and was denied from women. Women were also denied the right to education and they could not further their education by going to university. Lastly, they had next to no control over any property. These 'rules' and 'regulations' were put to 'help' society and families members of a community know where they stand. Men on the other hand, were expected to be the breadwinner of a family. The man to provide, housing, food, clothings and all necessities. Women were looked down upon and they were belittled. Whether it was fear or extreme idealism that drove men to mistreat women in the 1500, women will never understand why they were put through unjust discrimination.

https://prezi.com/9cbihxayk7j2/gender-roles-during-the-1500s-in-england/

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Labourer Gives Nobles a Piggy Back Ride.

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In the 1500s, a person could not just climb up the hierarchy pyramid. A laborer could not seek to become a noble, it was more a dream than a possibility. If one desires wealth, he must have to be born into it, so as to inherit it. Moreover, there was a significant discrimination in the social class in the 16th century, upon which, the system of serfdom was established. As the image portrays, people of lower class were tasked with doing the ‘heavy lifting’ for the higher-class citizens. Serfdom was sometimes enforced on a person as a punishment for a crime whereas, other times it was a consensual agreement which provided the laborer with protection, shelter, food and the possession of a certain portion of the land. Although there were some merits the laborers had, the higher profit always went to the people above them. The laborers bore the hardship while the nobles ripped the benefits of the work. Therefore, in some ways, serfdom can be viewed as a close relative to slavery. The laborer may agree to work for a certain amount of years and the noble he is assigned to may decide to ensure than he stays longer than intended. It was a difficult predicament to escape once involved.

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Women were usually witches or associated with witchcraft because they were understood to be more knowledgeable about herbs and the body.  The Christian clergy saw witches and sorcerers as competitors for their authority to assure blessings, healing and good fortune.  This is one factor that contributed to the attack on witches in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most accused of witchcraft were women, especially older women, and/or women who were widows or otherwise independent from male control.  Some may have indeed engaged in witchcraft.  But is also true that this class of women was both vulnerable and suspect because they are on the social fringes of the community.  Some have even argued that such women were a burden on poor and struggling communities.  And even when men faced allegations of witchcraft, it was typically because they were somehow associated with accused women. When women stepped outside their prescribed roles, they became targets. Too much wealth might reflect sinful gains. Too little money demonstrated bad character. Too many children could indicate a deal with a devil. Having too few children was suspicious, too.

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Women were legally reliant on their husbands in Medieval Europe. Women were forbidden from signing contracts, testifying in court, or borrowing money in their names under civil law. All of this had to be done with the legal authorization of their spouses. In summary, married women were extremely reliant on their husbands. Surprisingly, these prohibitions were in place in many European nations until recently. Though women were inferior to men, women in different classes had different roles. Low-class women were expected to be housewives and take care of everything to do with the house. The expectation of working-class women was a little bit different. These women were expected to work for their husbands and help them run their businesses. They would work alongside their husbands and then go home and take care of the household. Upper-class women may have had servants and workers working for them but the women were still expected to take care of the household. Women could not work by themselves. Neither could they live alone if they were not married. If a woman was single, she was made to move in with one of her male relatives or join a convent and become a nun. There was no other option at this time for women

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Serfs were frequently mistreated and had no legal recourse against their lords' misdeeds. Nearly 85% of the population was enslaved; the feudal 7 system's lords held all the peasants had except their capacity to work. Serfs were unable to marry, change vocations, or relocate without the approval of their lords, to whom they owed a large percentage of their harvest. Most of the time, serfs were forced to labour even though they had committed no crime; they were framed and forced to work. Their predicament was considerably worse than that of peasants. The only distinction between serfs and slaves was that serfs were slaves to the land, and when land ownership changed, so did the owners. They were linked to a hereditary plot of land and his landlord's whim. And that serfs had time limits, but that this only happened when the masters felt like, it would be very simple to get them back in and extend their time.

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How Much It Sucked to Be a Medieval Serf

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In my example, the inequality is between women and patriarchal society. since women had many restrictions and no power. The best representation of the inequality can be seen when talking about the fact that women are only allowed to focus on only their husbands, and domestic chores, while men are allowed to focus on themselves and their lives. women are not also allowed to voice out their opinions or oppose authority. when women tries to oppose authority, they will be thrown out of the community for their loud beliefs and aggressive behaviour. in the 17th century, the problem with inequality did not disappear as societies were still patriarchal, where women had to act as maids at home and obeying their husbands words and instructions.

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The image represents the society of the medival era, where one group of people enjoys themselves in the company of other high class indiividuals, and others are going through hard and unreasonable labor, like carying one to the sauna. The image represents the society of the 1500s, and how it has been. One of the lower class are completing unnecessary work that can easily be done by the people of the high class themselves, yet people of lower class tend to follow the commands of their owners/leaders to praise them, as the lower class have no purpose in life.

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Feudal lords or serf-owners own most of the productive resources such as land, mountains, grasslands, and rivers, and partially own serfs; serfs get a piece of land from the serf-owners, in exchange for they must cultivate the lord's land for free, perform all kinds of labor, and turn it over most labor products. The basic feature of serfdom was that serfs were tied to the land and had to depend on their serf owners. The serf owners took advantage of this personal dependence to carry out extra-economic forced exploitation of the serfs. The form of land rent in serfdom was mainly labor rent, supplemented by a small amount of rent in kind and money.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2019/10/royal-obsession-black-magic-started-europes-most-brutal-witch

Through my example of the witch hunt, a lot of inequalities in the 16th century can be derived.
Firstly, the fact that 85% of the convicted witches were women shows the inherent sexism. The underlying reason is that women were considered to be the weaker sex, thus were more easily seduced by Satan and other devils.
Secondly, the example shows the lack of right of defending themselves of the ordinary people - the working class. A person can be convicted of being a witch just by the accusation of their neighbours, which often resulted from quarrels. Even if the person denied it, he/she was tortured until he/she admitted it.
Thirdly, there was inequality between the religions. A motive behind the notorious witch hunt might be to counter the Protestant Reformation. The king and nobility wanted to eradicate the heresy out of their country and to solidify their self-claimed god chosen to rule. Religions other than Catholic were not free to be practiced.

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During the late 1500s Scotland believed the devil was at work in the land. Locals talked about his ability to raise storms, kill livestock, and spread deadly illness. Satan sought to undermine human society from within and was recruiting secret agents to do his bidding. Those diabolical actors were witches, and the authorities believed they had to be eradicated for the sake of the kingdom.

Scotland was not alone in falling victim to witchcraft panics in the late 16th century and first half of the 17th century. Witch-hunting plagued Europe, beginning in the 15th century when the idea that witches worshipped the devil began to take hold. Burgundy, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Scandinavia all endured outbreaks of witch panics during this time. After the Reformation divided Europe into Protestant and Catholic in the early 16th century, both sides hunted witches. During this period of religious reform, rulers wanted to prove their godliness. They perceived the unholy and evil as the source of unrest and disorder. ( See how Satan and his punishments were depicted in the Middle Ages.)

Witch-hunting could be seen as an extension of the Protestant Reformation as parish ministers and government authorities sought to create a "godly state" in which everyone worshipped correctly, and sin and ungodliness were wiped out. In numerical terms, Scotland's witch hunts were severe. Between 1590 and 1662, five intense panics erupted across Scotland: 1590-91, 1597, 1628-1631, 1649-1650, and 1661-62. ( Watch an animated history of Martin Luther's starting the Reformation.)

As a result of these panics, out of a population of roughly a million people, about 2,500 accused witches, most of them women, were executed - five times the average European execution rate per capita. Scotland's susceptibility to widespread panic over witches and witchcraft was, in part, determined by the role of one man: the Scottish ruler King James VI, who, following the death of Elizabeth I, became King James I of England in 1603.

King James VI of Scotland (seated, right) supervising the torture of witches in Edinburgh, detail of a woodcut from the 1591 pamphlet Newes From Scotland.

Photograph by Charles Walker Collection, Alamy, Cordon Press

The king's book

Scottish Parliament had criminalised witchcraft in 1563, just before James's birth. The act made being a witch a capital offence. Nearly three decades passed before the first major witchcraft panic arose in 1590, when King James came to believe that he and his Danish bride, Anne, had been personally targeted by witches who conjured dangerous storms to try to kill the royals during their voyages across the North Sea.

One of the first accused in this panic was a woman named Geillis Duncan, from Tranent in East Lothian. In late 1590 her employer, David Seton, accused her and tortured her into a confession in which she named several accomplices. Duncan later retracted her confession, but by then the panic was well under way.

King James sanctioned witch trials after an alarming confession in 1591 from an accused witch, Agnes Sampson. It was revealed that 200 witches-even some from Denmark-had sailed in sieves to the church of the coastal town of North Berwick on Halloween night in 1590. There the devil preached to them and encouraged them to plot the king's destruction. After hearing these confessions, even though they had been extorted by torture, King James and his advisers came to believe a witchcraft conspiracy threatened his reign. It must have been alarming, but also gratifying, to have the devil allegedly say that the king was his greatest enemy on earth.

Geillis Duncan and Agnes Sampson were two of many put to death during the first great panic. Although it cannot be said with certainty how many suspected witches were executed during the North Berwick trials, more than a hundred people were implicated.

Tantallon Castle sits near North Berwick, Scotland, where witches allegedly worked to sink the ships of King James VI and his consort, Queen Anne.

Photograph by Clearview, AGE Fotostock

Six years later another panic broke out. Once again, witches were reported to be conspiring against King James personally. A woman named Margaret Aitken, the so-called great witch of Balwearie, claimed a special power to detect other witches, many of whom were put to death on her word alone. This panic halted abruptly when Aitken was exposed as a fraud. This incident embarrassed witch-hunters greatly, and that same year, partly to justify the recent trials, King James published his treatise, Daemonologie. Witchcraft attracted scholarly interest in the 16th century, and the king's book reflects how James saw himself as an intellectual. ( King James VI is also known for this sacred Christian work: the King James Bible.)

Daemonologie explains the way the devil operated in the world. He was the leader of fallen angels, who had become demons. These demons made pacts with people and granted them powers to work harmful magic. According to James's book, therefore, witchcraft was a secret conspiracy between humans and demons, who were out to do all the harm they could. Against this conspiracy, the faithful's only hope was to appeal to God-and especially to the God-given powers of kings like James.

Later political events shifted witchhunting away from the central place in James's worldview of his role as a divinely ordained king. After James succeeded Queen Elizabeth I as sovereign of England in 1603, he faced a new religious opponent: militant Catholics. Catholic conspiracies threatened his claim on the English throne, in much the same way the North Berwick witches threatened him in Scotland. After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605-Guy Fawkes's plan to blow up Parliament and kill the king-James turned away from hunting witches in favour of rooting out any Catholic conspiracies. ( Learn how Guy Fawkes became a symbol of protest.)

From royal to local

Agnes Sampson, one of the accused witches from North Berwick, was questioned by King James at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, the seat of Scottish royalty for centuries.

Even though King James's attentions had shifted, ideas about witchcraft had permeated Scottish society. The notion of witches as a demonic conspiracy descended through the lower levels of local government, making the witch hunts of the 17th century local as well as national affairs.

There was a geographical pattern that shows the state's interest in rooting out witches: Heavy witch-hunting took place in areas near the centres of state power, such as Fife and Lothian. Fear of the devil was at its peak when the state was determined to enforce religious uniformity.

More than half of all Scottish witch-hunting took place during brief but intense periods of panic. In one locality after another, the authorities uncovered evidence of apparent witch conspiracies. Outside the panic periods, by contrast, there were a trickle of cases.

Most practical measures to weed out witches were taken by the local leaders of Scottish society, the lairds (local aristocrats) and ministers. They formed kirk sessions (parish committees of the church) to supervise the people and to bring them to godliness. Kirk sessions were not criminal courts, but they could arrest and interrogate suspects and pass cases on to the secular authorities. Most offences that kirk sessions dealt with concerned extramarital sex, which may explain why so many Scottish female witches were accused of sex with the devil.

While many of these incidents began locally, some panics in Scotland had origins overseas. The third nationwide panic began in 1628 and probably spread to Scotland from Germany, which also experienced a huge upsurge of witch-hunting in the late 1620s at the time of the Thirty Years' War.

The effect of such panics would have been felt at the most local level: In western Scotland, in the parish church of Dundonald, for example, on November 8, 1629,"the minister publicly out of the pulpit . . . did inhibit and discharge all sorts of charming, and resorting to charmers, consulting with wizards, sorcerers, and others of that sort, certifying all and sundry who did so in time coming, they should be . . . prosecuted with death, as for the crimes of witchcraft."

The accused

The main stereotype of an accused witch was an elderly, quarrelsome female. Often the initial suspects in a panic would be individuals whose neighbours complained of their harmful magic. Once the initial suspects were pressed to name accomplices, however, the latter were accused less of harmful magic and more of having made a pact with the devil. For women, this usually included a sexual relationship with the male devil. The few accusations against men omitted the sexual element. A man had to do something quite specific and rare in order to be charged with witchcraft. As a result, 85 percent of the convicted witches were women.

'Names of the Witches 1658' is a carefully compiled list of 114 people accused of witchcraft in the panic that started that year. The manuscript is held at the Wellcome Library in London and has recently been digitised, giving more people access to its contents.

Photograph by Wellcome Library

Quarrels were often a source of accusations. Sometimes, villagers did indeed curse their neighbours during a feud, but usually people sought reconciliations. Confessions and neighbours' testimonies reveal much about quarrels and curses. Katherine Craigie, tried in Orkney in 1640, told her neighbour, who was unwell, "that I prayed ill for you, and now I see that prayer hath taken effect." Peasants usually did not want their local witches executed. Even so, they didn't object when the authorities executed them.

Scottish witch-hunting was partly about local quarrels and partly about the elite's fear of the devil, but some of it was also about magical fantasy. Some people really believed that they could cast spells. However, these spells were generally benevolent. Marion Grant, in Aberdeenshire in 1597, cured sick cattle by casting south-running water on them in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, and "Christsonday," the name of an angel in folk belief. The interrogators thought that Christsonday was really the devil, showing the culture gap between the common folk and the elite.

An engraving reproduces Henry Fuseli's 1783 painting of the witches from Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. First performed in 1606, the play was a compliment to the newly crowned king of England, James I, who had published a book on witchcraft in 1597.

Confessions through torture

Witch-hunters unwittingly created evidence through torture. Panics were created and fueled by torturing suspects and then asking them to name their accomplices. The people thus named could be arrested and made to confess to a pact with the devil. Some confessions also included fantastical elements and told of bizarre experiences. The 1644 trial of Margaret Watson recorded the following startling details:

"Thou hast confessed that ... thou and the rest of the witches dug up corpses of deceased persons, from whom you took members to accomplish your Devilish designs; at your meetings you blasphemed God's name and you used to drink and dance; Mallie Paterson rode upon a cat, Janet Lockie rode upon a cock, thy aunt Margaret Watson rode upon a hawthorn tree, thou thyself rode upon a bundle of straw, and Jean Lachlan rode upon an elder tr ee."

Sleep deprivation was the most common method of torture. After about three days without sleep, not only would a suspect lose the ability to resist their questioners, but they would also start to hallucinate, leading to many confessions that included exotic details like sailing in sieves. These are not sober accounts of real activities; they are fantasies concocted by confused, despairing, and terrified people, searching desperately for the answers that would satisfy their interrogators.

There was no need for such suspects to be convicted of harmful magic if a pact with the devil could be proved by a confession. Because of the perceived societal threat posed by the devil, the courts accepted flimsy evidence. In Scotland convicted witches were burned, as in most European countries. Rather than being burned alive, however, it was the custom in Scotland to strangle suspected witches at the stake first.

"Rather than being burned alive... it was the custom in Scotland to strangle suspected witches at the stake first."

Panics die down

In the late 17th century religious pluralism became more acceptable. New scientific ideas undermined the dogmatic certainty about witchcraft. Courts refused to accept confessions that might have been extorted by torture. Witch-hunting became less vital to the state, and there were no more national panics after 1662.

Local panics still flared up for another half century or so. Scotland's unique case of vigilante justice occurred in the small fishing town of Pittenweem in the early 1700s. This late episode illustrates what might happen when the populace had been persuaded to fear witches, but the authorities were no longer willing to execute them. Four of the Pittenweem suspects confessed to witchcraft, but then they retracted their confessions. The central authorities in Edinburgh refused to allow a trial, and the suspects had to be released. However, on January 30, 1705, a crowd killed one of the accused women, Janet Cornfoot, by dragging her to the beach, placing a door on top of her, and piling stones onto the door until she died.

For all the gruesomeness of its mob justice, the Pittenweem case would be among Scotland's last witch panics. The last execution of all took place in Dornoch in 1727, and in 1736, the British Parliament repealed the 1563 witchcraft statute. Since then some small monuments have been erected to the victims of witch panics in Scotland, but there are calls for a larger, more formal monument to recognise the great injustice perpetrated against the thousands of innocent women and men tortured and killed during the great panics of four centuries ago.

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A royal obsession with black magic started Europe's most brutal witch hunts

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In the 1590s, King James I of Scotland's fear of witchcraft began stirring up national panics, resulting in the torture and death of thousands.

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Western European guilds in the early modern period (1500–1800) were archetypal patriarchal institutions. In cities and towns where they existed, the vast majority of guilds restricted their membership to men. Corporate statutes not only prohibited women from becoming mistresses, they also prevented them from entering apprenticeship or even taking employment with masters. Widows could inherit privileges from their husbands, but always with significant limitations.

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In my example, the inequality is between women and patriarchal society since women had many restrictions and consequently no power. The most vivid representation of inequality could be seen when referring to the fact that females focused on domestic pursuits and especially their husbands, while males were allowed to focus on themselves, their lives, their positions and education. Furthermore, when women attempted to oppose authority, they would be discriminated against and excommunicated for their loud beliefs and aggressive behaviour, which may stand as another illustration of inequality and hierarchy. At the same time, males were permitted to voice their opinions without being evaluated. In the 17th century, the problem with inequality did not disappear as societies were still patriarchal, where women had to act as counsellors in the home, "tempering" their husbands' words and actions.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/women-16th-17th-and-18th-centuries-introduction

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In my example, inequality is represented by the difference of social class between the serfs and the nobility. Serfdom is mainly established using coercive actions because lands have no value without serfs working on them to make profits. However, serfdom is slightly different from slavery in the sense that the tenant farmers are bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of their landlord, whereas slaves would typically be bought and sold without references to any plot of land. A substantial proportion of grain the serfs grew is to be given to the lord and the serfs are also restricted from working on other lands that are not their landlord’s. They severely lack personal liberties and oftentimes are treated harshly with little legal protection from their landlords. The only ways for them to become freedmen are mainly through enfranchisement or escape.