I'll admit, I was a little too lost in the adventure to think about the more Doylist ramifications of the "abused woman hinted to have a mental illness is a dangerous bad guy threatening lives" plot. After a novel full of travel, horse care, and reassuring every new community that no really, THIS wolf is a good boy, having an "episode" with a more modern-feeling villain added a bit of heightened excitement to the plot. The "political intrigue," insofar as that term works for cavefolks communities, was also a fresh bit of world-building, and an interesting examination of how the natural behaviors of our species can lead to unbalanced and oppressive social hierarchies being constructed, even without the modern "technologies" of organized military, etc. But your observation is valid, and a reminder that I tend to be overly Watsonian in my analyisi! (I also maybe shouldn't have used the phrase "fascist dictator" to describe Attaroa; it's an overly modern and emotionally charged term to be applying to these Stone Age characters!)
I'm going to drop some quotes from that sequence below, just to demonstrate the vibes. Since I'm getting the feeling you're not interested in picking the series back up, I guess you don't care about spoilers? Feel free to stop reading here if I'm wrong about that.
(Context: Jondalar has been captured by Attaroa's tribe and caged, and Attaora asked for him to leave the cage.)
"What if I don't want to go outside?" Jondalar said.
"Then she'll probably have you killed here and now." [. . .] It was the shaman! "If you go outside, Attaroa will probably let you live a little longer. You interest her, but eventually she'll kill you anyway."
"Why? What am I to her?" Jondalar asked.
"A threat."
"A threat. You threaten her control. She'll want to make an example of you."
(And then, a few pages later:)
[A description of Jondalar while Attaroa looks at him.] She felt strongly attracted to him, but the very strength of her response dredged up painful memories long suppressed and provoked a powerful but strangely twisted reaction. She would not allow herself to be attracted to any man, because to have feelings for one might give him control over her—and never again would she allow anyone, particularly a man, to have control over her.
[. . .]
Jondalar not only threatened her leadership, he threatened the fragile world that her sick mind had led her to create. He even threatened her tenuous hold on reality, which had recently been stretched very thin.
Those are the types of descriptions that made me associate Attaroa with the role of a dictator: feeling a tenuous hold on power that can be easily threatened by anyone who doesn't feel fear of her. That last paragraph is also the first hint of some kind of mental illness, though it's limited by the vocabulary of the time, as it were. I think there's a more explicit comment about that later, if I can find it while leafing through . . .
Oh yeah, found it! Ayla has her Big Damn Hero moment on horseback, entering Attaroa's camp in time to save Jondalar from being used as target practice. Attaroa's tribe has never seen a person riding on a horse before, and Ayla is an expert at reading facial expressions and body language, due to being raised by the mostly nonverbal Clan/Neanderthal . . .
On her approach, Ayla had watched the tall headwoman's face reflecting her inner reactions, showing shock and fear, and the despair of her moment of clarity, but as the woman on horseback drew closer, dark and deranged shadows clouded the leader's mind again. Attaroa narrowed her eyes to watch the blond woman, then slowly smiled, a smile of twisted, calculating malice.
Ayla had never seen madness, but she interpreted Attaroa's unconscious expressions, and she understood that this woman who threatened Jondalar was someone to be wary of; she was a hyena. The woman on horseback had killed many carnivores and knew how unpredictable they could be, but it was only hyenas that she despised. They were her metaphor for the very worst that people could be, and Attaroa was a hyena, a dangerously malignant manifestation of evil who could never be trusted.
So . . . yeah. Not great, either in terms of Attaroa being a victim of abuse, or sympathy for people with mental illness, though it's partly because the narration is constrained by speaking in terms the primitive characters can understand. Though Ayla does comment on the situation: "Cruelty mothers cruelty, pain breeds pain, abuse fosters abuse," which does acknowledge that the situation has been brought about by the harm done to Attaroa in her earlier years, and isn't originating with her.
. . . This isn't as fun as when I started hunting for quotes, so I think I'm going to stop there. Sorry for being a bummer!
—doctorlit, still amused that the characters in a series full of "sharing pleasures" have no idea where babies come from