the Quran, hadith (sayings of Muhammad), and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society. Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to improve the religious, legal, and social status of women within Judaism and to open up new opportunities for religious experience and leadership for Jewish women. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of Judaism. In its modern form, the movement can be traced to the early 1970s in the United States. According to Judith Plaskow, who has focused on feminism in Reform Judaism, the main issues for early Jewish feminists in these movements were the exclusion from the all-male prayer group or minyan, the exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot, and women's inability to function as witnesses and to initiate divorce. The Dianic Wicca or Wiccan feminism is a female-focused and Goddess-centered Wiccan faith that is also known as a feminist religion that teaches witchcraft as every woman's right. It is also one faith of the many practiced in Wicca. Atheist feminism advocates the equality of men and women within atheism. Atheist feminists also oppose religion, being a major source of female oppression and inequality, believing that all religions are sexist and oppressive to women. Theology Feminist theology, sometimes referred to as the Goddess movement, is a movement found in several religions to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about the deity or deities, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the religion's sacred texts. In Wicca, "the Goddess" is a deity of prime importance, along with her consort the Horned God. In the earliest Wiccan publications, she is described as a tribal goddess of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor universal, and it was recognised that there was a greater "Prime Mover", although the witches did not concern themselves much with this being. References