These are great questions and you are not the first person to ask:

https://medium.com/@raecarterempowr/how-the-burning-times-of-witches-influences-white-women-culture-today-23df2579c10b

This post changed my thinking about white women in European history.

I've always thought that the first group of people rich white men brought to heel through threats of violence must have been white women. Women and the poor were the first test subjects, after finding that it worked, they took their program on a world tour.