The issue discussed here concerns the different theories on why witch hunts took place. This is a topic that attracts many different views and opinions. It is unlikely that we will ever truly understand the exact reasons, but historians can draw informed and logical conclusions based on supporting information and evidence. Not all ideas have as much evidence as others and some theories have been largely ignored or disproved. Hester's ideas in “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting” take the feminist stance and rely on the theory of misogyny to explain what the possible reasons behind the witch are. -the hunts were. Hester simply argues that one aspect is that witch hunting was a means of social control of women and a means of reasserting the authority of a patriarchal society; a way of restoring and maintaining the masculine status quo in a changing social order (Hester). Hester's theory is true, at least in part; Generally speaking, the accusation of “witch” was much more often leveled against women than against men. In the Holy Roman Empire, approximately 24,000 people were accused of being witches, 76% of whom were women. Germany and Hungary also had large numbers of defendants, the majority being women, more than 80 percent. There are exceptions to this rule in countries like Russia, Normandy, Estonia and Iceland, where the main victims of witch hunting were men. There are also places where witch hunting was relatively equal for both sexes, such as France and Finland. These exceptions reinforce one of Holmes' ideas about witch hunting. Holmes argues that it was not so much misogyny but rather the fact that women, more often than men, possessed attributes that, during this period, caused people to think...... middle paper...... .Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. London: Routledge, 1996. Scarre, Geoffrey and John Callow. Witchcraft and magic in 16th and 17th century Europe. 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Sharpe, James. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. Pocket edition. Philiadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Wills, Deborah. Malicious Eating: Witch Hunts and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Oldridge, Darren. The Witchcraft Reader. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2008. Holmes, Clive. “Women: witnesses and witches”. Past and Present 140 (1993): 45-78.Hester, Marianne. “Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunt.” Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (1996): 288-306.