Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop
Beacon Press (2024)

​An incisive examination of why the pillars of feminism have eroded—and how all women, not just the #girlbosses, can rebuild them

Faux Feminism argues that white feminism, and other feminisms for the few such as neoliberal feminism, are grounded in the mistaken view that feminism is a movement for individual freedom rather than against group-based hierarchy. Using examples from popular culture and social movements, Khader lays bare the traps laid by capitalism and white supremacy and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future.

“An incisive and compelling book that gets to the heart of the issue... The clarity and poise of her writing further make Faux Feminism an essential and marvelous read.”
—Rafia Zakaria, author of Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption

Faux Feminism is a page-turner—timely, beautifully argued, and important reading in an era of misinformation, consumer capitalism, and right-wing populism.”
—Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism Without Borders

Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic
Oxford University Press (2018)

​​Decolonizing Universalism argues that feminism can respect cultural and religious differences and acknowledge the legacy of imperialism without surrendering its core ethical commitments.

"This is the book that we have been waiting for. Serene Khader explains how to be an anti-imperialist feminist without retreating from judgment or attempting to stay 'local.' Careful and balanced but powerfully argued, this is an absolute must for everyone concerned about gender-based oppression around the world." — Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

"This is an important and timely book. Khader argues that we can identify what is wrong in sexist oppression without thereby committing ourselves to a singular blueprint for what is right. In doing so, she offers a compelling way out of a current feminist impasse, one that has been particularly pressing for a transnational feminism seeking to avoid the universalising imposition of one cultural narrative. Her argument about the transition costs of challenging oppression is especially persuasive, as is her critique of 'independence individualism,' and the book combines rigorous philosophical argument with carefully contextualised examples." — Anne Phillips, London School of Economics and Political Science​

"...Khader has produced a pioneering work." — Daniel Halliday, The Australian Book Review​

---

​
​Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment   ​
Oxford University Press (2011)                                                

​Women and other oppressed and deprived people sometimes collude with the forces that perpetuate injustice against them. Women's acceptance of their lesser claim on household resources like food, their positive attitudes toward clitoridectemy and infibulations, their acquiescence to violence at the hands of their husbands, and their sometimes fatalistic attitudes toward their own poverty or suffering are all examples of "adaptive preferences," wherein women participate in their own deprivation. 

Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment offers an original definition of adaptive preference and a moral framework for responding to adaptive preferences in development practice. 

"Serene Khader's book on adaptive preference is a book that should be read by anyone interested in oppression and how to struggle against and overcome it...This book offers many useful insights about how to determine whether choices are due to oppressive conditions through the mechanism of adaptive preference. It also usefully explains and categorizes the variety of definitions of and objections to adaptive preferences. Khader's account of deliberative perfectionism and how it can enable respectful transformations of preferences among the oppressed is an important intervention in the literature on development ethics. The book warrants a careful read by anyone with interests in global ethics and feminist intervention." — Anne E. Cudd, Notre Dame Review of Books

---

The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy
Co-Edited with Ann Garry and Alison Stone (2017)

This companion is a guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers, and debates in feminist philosophy. Fifty-six chapters, written by an international team of contributors specifically for this volume, are organized into five sections: (1) Engaging the Past; (2) Mind, Body, and World; (3) Knowledge, Language, and Science; (4) Intersections; (5) Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. The volume provides a mutually engaging representation of the several philosophical traditions that contribute to feminist philosophy. It also foregrounds issues of global concern and scope; shows how feminist theory meshes with rich theoretical approaches that start from transgender identities, race and ethnicity, sexuality, disabilities, and other axes of identity and oppression; and highlights the interdisciplinarity of feminist philosophy and the ways that it both critiques and contributes to the whole range of subfields within philosophy.
​
"This is an amazing volume, representing a staggering range of views, methodologies, and traditions." — Jennifer Saul, University of Sheffield

"If feminism is to do justice to its claims of inclusiveness regarding the thought and lives of women, then it needs to be mindful of its own exclusionary past, its practices of gatekeeping and romantic claims about sisterhood. The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy, conceived as an interdisciplinary, historical and conceptual collection of essays written by an array of thinkers versed in both the analytic and continental philosophical traditions, aims for a more critical, more inclusive feminist theory and practice." 
​— Mariana Ortega, John Carroll University

---