Paper long abstract:

Gender studies have greatly gained academic attention among scholars across the globe, and the Yoruba society is not an exception. From the inception of the written literary tradition in the society, the portrait of women has preoccupied the works of Yoruba literary artists. The virtues, denials and roles of women are thematically presented. The portrayal of women in the Yoruba oral narratives and poetic genres, the forms of literature that existed before the inception of western education, had shown that patriarchal voices undertone the presentation of women. Trends in the portrayal of women, even in the contemporary time, attest to the fact that there are divergent views on gender issues among the Yoruba writers and critics.

This paper, therefore, attempts a diachronic survey of gender consciousness in written literary works of Yoruba expressions. It intends to foreground the various images of the woman/ girl child in time and space from the inception of Yoruba written literature. For the purpose of this paper, the Yoruba written literature is classified into three using the period of publication as the yardstick: the earliest writings, (1930-1980), middle course (1980-2000) writing and the contemporary writings (2000 to date). Three texts are randomly and purposively sampled from each group. However, the works of some female writers are sampled in order to evaluate the perception of female on female and to make a comparative analysis of the male writers’ and female writers’ perception on gender consciousness. The selected texts are subjected to analysis using the feminist and ‘’African womanist’’ approaches.

Findings reveal that writers in the earliest group consciously present the patriarchal ideology by subjecting the female characters through the thematic, linguistic and imagistic preoccupation of women writings. It is also revealed that the women liberation movement and female emancipation influenced some writers in the middle course and contemporary time. However, some writers respond positively to the global view on gender balance and female empowerment. The perception of some female writers about their female counterpart also reveal that the Yoruba female writers though fulfilled their social commitment of creature of awareness on female emancipations are still objective, they do not spare erring female characters in their literary works.

In conclusion, the paper submits that cultural value has a great impact on the perception of feminism in the Yoruba society and African at language. Thus, gender issue is a dynamic field in African, and this is reflected in the participation of female writers in the production of written literary works in the society.