European women in the 17th century were not considered to be as strong and steady as men were. They were expected to be the homemaker, the mediator in the community, and the childraiser. As far as the common mindset went, the woman was either a very good, virtuous creature or a vile and sinful one. Even if she fell into the first category, there were endless amounts of literature that detailed how easily she could fall and what she may have done when she did as opposed to what may make a man fall and therefore, women were more likely to be evildoers than men were.
A woman corrupted by the devil was sexually loose, the anti-mother who aborted her children or offered them to Satan, the bad neighbor who sought to harm everyone around her. The Malleus Maleficarum specifically states that the “greater part” of witches are indeed female. The writing also specifies that witchcraft can be practiced by anyone regardless of whether or not they’re actually married, so marriage was not necessarily a factor that declared a person’s innocence, either, despite marriage being decribed as "god's work" in sources of the time. Therefore, a married woman was not exempt from accusations of bewitching her family and neighbors.
According to the Malleus, men were also believed to be bewitched more often than women specifically because of the way the penis was formed and its virility was related to power. This would also explain why it was sometimes stated that a witch might steal penises and basically steal the power from a man to use for herself. If a man couldn’t get an erection or copulate with his wife, it was a slap to the face in regards to his strength and it left both him and his wife frustrated. However, it should be noted that this particular sentiment is entirely phallocentric; it revolves around a man’s virility and a woman’s reception of that virility. If she chose to not have sex with her husband or otherwise took control of her own sexual pleasure, then, it was seen as a sign that her thoughts had been darkened, which once again goes back to the idea of how quickly a woman’s thoughts were believed to fall to evil.
More than a dozen editions of the Malleus were printed between 1485 and 1520; another half-dozen editions were printed in English in 1584 (Peel and Southern, 111). While its influence on the Continent was waning in the early 17th century, it was still very much relevant in Scotland and England during this time.
Heinrich Kramer, and Jacob Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, (1487).