Woman: Victim or Villain?

Gen. 31-40 Rachel smuggles out the family gods. Dinah is raped. Rachel dies in childbirth. Tamar tricks Judah into giving her a child as she wasn't given another husband when hers died. And Potiphar's wife is foiled in her attempt to get Joseph to sleep with her, though she does manage to get him thrown in prison.
Why are all these women either trying to take advantage of others or being taken advantage of? Does it have something to do w/ women being marginalized and powerless and lashing back? I don't really think so. There are men in these accounts being manipulating and manipulated as well. Laban doesn't discover Rachel's stolen items. She hides them underneath her and won't move because she's having her period. Dinah's abuser and all his family are slaughtered by her brothers. Judah and Joseph respectively end up embarrassed/rebuked and thrown in prison. In these particular narratives, it's hard to say who really has the upper hand.
Do women have more of a tendency to use their sexuality to accomplish their ends while men are more prone to brutality? Perhaps it's an abuse of the God-ordained order--the desperation to tempt and control on the part of the one who is to help and to follow, the tendency to manhandle(interesting that "man" is in the word) on the part of one who is to protect.
We are all victims and villains, sinning and sinned against.
Such a need for, such a gift in salvation.