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Paper short abstract

Amongst African/Isoko women, Wrappers (loincloth) embody their being, knowledge, lived experiences, and wealth. Thus impacting women's agency, care ethics, and epistemic justice. Analysing the epistems of African/Isoko Women wrappers is significant to developmental processes in African societies.

Paper long abstract

Amongst indigenous African/Isoko women, a wrapper embodies her experience; it represents her ethics/values. At different developmental stages, these women’s wrappers become a priceless possession, embodying their knowledge, lived experiences and secure future. Allman, J. (2004) explained it as ‘the power and politics of dress’, but not much has been researched on the meta-ethical values or the epistemes of African/Isoko women’s wrappers. This paper aims to explore women's agency, caring ethics, and epistemic justice, as encapsulated in their traditional practices. Its objective includes examining the epistemic ties in African/Isoko women's traditional practices, as well as the feminist development processes and ethics of women's inheritance rites. It interrogates how indigenous African women's philosophies can be harvested for economic development. The study employs ethnographic research, critical analysis, and philosophical clarification of clothing, particularly Isoko women’s, conveyed through their views of wrappers, thus emphasising the ethics of care ingrained in women's daily behaviours. The paper recommends and concludes on how an African/Isoko theory of epistemic justice can guide knowledge creation and influence Africa's developmental futures. It demonstrates how feminist care ethics can redefine developmental ethics, including broadening the definition of knowledge by drawing on African women's philosophical ideas and everyday material culture, such as the wrapper, a seemingly straightforward item that serves as instruments of care, agency, and social regulation, providing avenues for African societies to develop in a way that is progressive, restorative, and sustainable