Some feminist critics such as Ogundipe and Mary David have argued that some of Soyinka’s work contributes to the marginalization of African women through the portrayal of his female characters, which often reinforces traditional gender roles, and his apparent reverence for African cultural practices, which sometimes include patriarchal norms. Explaining how Soyinka belittled the efforts of the Women’s Movement in his book Ake, Ogundipe wrote in 1994 that, ‘the greatest disservice Soyinka does the Women’s Movement is to portray it as an unplanned, impulsive, gut reaction to contemporary maladministration.’ While Ogundipe highlights Soyinka’s act of undermining the Women’s movement by regarding it as ‘spontaneous speeches from women,’ David explains Soyinka’s depiction of his women’s characters as unrealistic. Analyzing these viewpoints from Ogundipe and David, Malawian academic, Mpalive-Hangson Msiska highlights the complexity of Soyinka’s work, which often fosters space for women’s performances of agency consistent with an African feminist perspective. He explained that: 

Soyinka’s simultaneous essentialization of gender difference and refusal to see this as necessarily a validation of gender inequality is borne out further by the way in which his most radical women characters…often use their womanhood as part of an arsenal with which they undermine oppressive rule. 

Although Soyinka has never been vocal about engaging in thinking that gestures toward feminist ideologies, many of his works highlight his portrayal of women and attribution of social roles to gender difference as a means to articulate women’s superiority and their unique relationship to nature and life. In both The Lion and the Jewel and Death and the King’s Horseman, Soyinka departs from the Western form of gender construction by writing female characters who transgress colonial and patriarchal understandings of gender. Death and the King’s Horseman presents a more complex interplay of gender roles. Iyaloja, the leader of the market, is portrayed as a radical woman who uses her womanhood as an arsenal to undermine oppressive rule. Despite the patriarchal construction of the society, Iyaloja’s character as a well-respected leader and influential figure in the community suggests a subtle subversion of these traditional roles. She maintains a crucial position in the critical decision-making process, highlighting that women in Yoruba societies wield considerable power. Her agency in the play is more overt, and as a matriarchal figure, she serves as society’s moral and spiritual compass. While she gives in to Elesin Oba’s lustful desires to take a new wife on the eve of his ritual suicide, she is not unaware of Elesin Oba’s superficiality to the ancestral cause, which is why she holds him accountable by attributing his downfall to his lack of will power and not merely Pilking’s intervention. The expected ritual suicide of Elesin Oba is regarded as not just a personal one but communal, and Iyaloja’s role in this ritual emphasizes the connection between the female body and the spiritual well-being of the community. She understands that Elesin Oba’s arrest is not an individual arrest but a disruption to the indigenous traditional culture of her people.  

Her speaking back at Pilkings, a representative of the colonial authority, and calling him ‘a child’ highlights a radical performance of disruption within a patriarchal society that expects silence from women. As a matriarch, she engages in the production of a counter-hegemonic agency, and her character exemplifies African women’s power and influence and challenges the notion that they are passive participants in shaping society. Besides Iyaloja, the women and girls in the market exhibit a moment of agency, using their bodies as sites of power and resistance. Confronting Amusa and his two constables during Elesin Oba’s arrest, these women take a determined stand and block the men’s movement. Although placed in a position of abject within a traditional society, these women mobilize performance as a political and revolutionary tool. By drawing attention to their bodies, they disorganize and reorganize the limits placed on them into something different and open a potential and radical African feminist imaginative space of being. Their choice of words in their altercation with Amusa and their imitative performance of white acts showcase their awareness of modern and colonial tenets, exemplifying African women’s ability to reclaim agency and breech normative rules when needed. Their shapeshifting abilities become a tool to distort and transgress boundaries and foster sites of new possibilities.