Anyone and everyone can be sucked into a cult. It doesn't matter how rich or poor, how clever or stupid you are, where you live, what job you do or don't do, how stable or unstable you are, what God you do or don't believe in: 100% of people are susceptible to being groomed and manipulated by cults. Nobody is immune. It just takes the wrong people at the right time and bingo... bye bye normal life.
Have you ever been to a UFO or aliens talk? Ever gone to a non-trad church? Or a spiritualist or paranormal workshop, or an informal politics group in the back room of a pub, or an NLP class, or a self-improvement meeting in the local high school, or a introduction to Buddhism lecture, or a mindfulness class or a free yoga session? Do you swing, take drugs, are you into kinky stuff? Do you like crystals, herbal medicine, or personality tests? If you've done any of those things, then you're at risk. Whoever you are, there's a cult just for you -- you just maybe haven't run into it yet.
There's loads of lists of behaviours 'cults' demonstrate, and yet, even if you learn them off by heart, you're still susceptible. Most of the time, in the early stages? You're not being 'actively' recruited you're the one making the all the effort. Initially, you're not even being groomed you're actually grooming yourself. That's why such groups are so hard to leave -- you can't admit you've done a number on yourself until something BIG happens, and even then.. well... maybe you'll be too far gone or in too deep to care.
I could bang on for years about this - it's one of my 'special interests'.
But, the question was...
'How do cults specifically affect women?' And I had to think about that.
My long-winded response is...
In many ways. And it depends on the cult. Some cults just want your money, some are fronts for international sex trafficking, some are child sexual abuse rackets, some have you begging on the streets or selling magazines, materials or courses, or they have you out recruiting other people, some perform child marriage, some practise polygamy, some are wife-swappers, some turn women into prostitutes, some cults use them as unpaid labour (modern day slavery), some women are coerced into degrading sexual practises or promiscuity, or married off to unsuitable men.
In most cults, be they religious, political, or therapy/self empowerment groups, women are generally not especially prized in their own right. They are not often allowed to be 'leaders' or 'perform ceremony'. They are 'disempowered' by their 'faith'. When women are told that they should 'keep sweet', be quiet, do as they're told, are helpmeets or property of their husbands and masters, it means women cannot question, which means their critical thinking skills wither and women become infantilized.
Women are often isolated from external sources of support: friends, family, non-cult members. Some cults don't want you to go to the doctors, or talk to 'agencies', which limits your chance of seeking assistance if things go wrong in the group. Eventually, your 'ordinary' life is replaced by the group -- job, accommodation, friends, social support, finances: all of which makes it harder to leave if you ever 'wake up'.
Combine the lack of exit support with infantilization and it's no surprise women find it hard to leave.
If you don't watch TV, read newspapers, listen to the radio, you don't know about how you can silently show a doctor you're being abused by scribbling a black blob on your palm, you don't know how to go to the chemists and ask for 'ANI'. There may be social workers or nurses or policemen affiliated to the cult, you may have spent years being told that these people are the agents of Satan. You might not have a mobile phone and even if you do, you might not have anyone left to call if you've spent too long in a cult.
Woman are often conditioned to deny reality, and not trust their own judgement. Women are also not generally allowed to 'collectivise' or form a group for themselves within the cult without the oversight of men, as their ordinary female conversations and bonding are considered gossip and sinful. This means women start 'self-censoring'. It means they don't tell each other the truth. That means they feel isolated, even within the group, and they tell themselves they need to try harder to overcome their faults. They see everyone else smiling and happy and think there's something wrong with them -- they don't understand that everyone else is in the same boat and probably feeling the same feelings, and they're too scared or controlled to ask each other the right questions.
In such cults, women often start competing for status within the group by keeping other women in their place, reporting on other women's behaviours or comments, trying to get as close to the 'guru' as possible in an attempt to get favourable or better treatment, and are often willing to do whatever it takes to maintain their position. That means, not only do women not trust each other, but 'favourite' women will abuse, coerce or deliberately manipulate lesser women within the group so they can elevate their own position within the hierarchy. The psychological effects of this on women are immensely damaging. You might expect to be abused by men, but you don't expect it from other women. As a woman, you expect women to be on your side, empathise with your situation or have your back, more than men, and when they don't, it can adversely effect your future friendships forever.
In a lot of cults, women are told by their doctrines and 'guru's' that woman as a class of beings are worth less than men, won't get full enlightenment because they're female, are duplicitous, untrustworthy, or unclean, and their only value within the group is as wives and mothers. It also means that women who do not tow the line are more harshly punished, because they're naturally 'unclean/impure/deceitful' and are at the lowest level in the hierarchy, below even the 'ordinary' males, who are below the 'inner sanctum', who are below the 'guru'. This 'correction' takes many forms -- shunning, physical beatings, verbal berating, or forcing women to perform acts, ceremonies or rituals which are, they are told, designed to 'help' them 'overcome', but which usually results in trauma, exhaustion or mental breakdown.
In some cults, women are usually encouraged to feel shame via their menses, too -- often women are told they're dirty or impure when menstruating, which further impacts on their sense of worth.
These kind of cults usually encourage women to be traditional homemakers, which prevents women from earning enough money to be independent, which means when problems arise they're less likely to leave. They also encourage women to have as many children as possible, which can impact a women's health, both physically, and also psychologically -- often women are too exhausted taking care of their children to notice the impact the cult is having on their mental health or children's lives until something dramatic happens, and when somethings dramatic does happen, women are often too worn down to raise any real objections.
In such situations, women go into 'survival mode': to prevent themselves cracking up due to the anxiety-producing cognitive dissonance they feel, they instead try to live moment to moment, they make excuses for their abusers rather than deal with a reality they do not have the skills or resources to alter, and they dig in deeper: chant more, pray more, work harder, work through it.
Sometimes women in such groups who are labelled as 'wilful' or 'non-conforming' are determined to be 'mentally ill'. There have been instances where women in cults who will not conform to the cults philosophy have been sectioned, taken to psychiatric facilities or 'in-house' 'treatment' facilities run by the cult, heavily medicated and/or later abandoned or told to leave the group they're in.
Sometimes women, and their children are told by the 'guru' they are to relocate to another country, made to join another group, made to divorce or are married off to a new husband without their consent.
A lot of cults 'marry within the group', which causes custody issues for women if and when they decide to leave they legally cannot take their children with them due to their husbands' legal rights, or they are labelled unfit mothers or their past decisions are made known to the courts so that they lose custody of their children especially drug use, mental illness, or 'promiscuity' which, while not actually illegal, due to the patriarchal nature of most state systems, can mean a woman is painted as a 'bad mother'. often women would like to make a clean break: they often fear for their lives and/or sanity, but are forced by the courts to share access or facilitate parental contact, which means they cannot escape the cult. Parental alienation often occurs, and the cult conditions the children to see their mother as a source of evil/sin, which makes life even harder for these mothers who may then return to the cult rather than have their children hate them.
Not all cults are so obviously paternalistic: some cults 'allow' women to lead, but there's usually a bloke at the top who they have to 'keep sweet'. There's a few 'goddess' type cults, or 'female empowerment' type therapy cults, but even these 'female-focused' groups usually result in women being financially or sexually exploited and/or treated like slaves.
So, even if you don't end up poisoned in a Jonestown scenario, or end up setting yourself on fire to set yourself free, ala Solar Temple, even if all that happens is you shave your head and waste your life staring at the wall and waiting for the sky pixies to grant you great boons, cults will potentially wreck your life.