The majority of the hierarchies realised that the link between women and witchcraft had to be
cemented in the minds of the lower orders, to further guarantee the protection of the status quo. The
English, Scottish and most of the European regimes were consequently to publicise the view that
women, owing to a deviant characteristic of their nature, had distracted many men, making it
impossible for them to attain the standards of piety and social conformity which the regime
demanded in this epoch. The ‘gates of heaven’, it was commonly believed, would remain closed to
these moral under-achievers.