Gender Bias

My project is about what makes certain people funny. For this SDA, I have branched out from Louis, and looked generally at the world of comedy, and specifically women in comedy. I have done some research and gathered some statistics, and as you look through the charts, you’ll notice that in every chart presented, the men far outnumber the women. Most of the time, it’s not even close. I was trying to come up with some theories for why women get the jobs less. A fair amount of it is probably owed to the fact that when we’re children, boys are more encouraged to be funny than girls (at least in my own experience), which probably makes women less likely to choose the field of comedy later in life. I also assume that some of the problem stems from sexist hiring practices. These two problems would then produce a dearth of role models for younger girls, which would make them even less likely to go into comedy.

I think the more interesting question here is why do booking managers, and the general populace either assume, or find, women comedians to be less funny. My first thought was that women are at an inherent disadvantage because in our society they aren’t supposed to be self-deprecative. This is a huge problem in comedy, because being self-deprecative is the funniest way to tell jokes (see Louis CK, John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan). I’m pretty sure I’m wrong though, because women are allowed to be self-deprecating (blonde jokes, being bad at things) in our society, just not about their own appearance. It’s possible that this still makes a difference, because guys making fun of themselves for being out of shape is just that funny, but I don’t think that’s it entirely. Another reason could be that when guys talk about sex, people think it’s funny, and when girls talk about sex, people think it’s gross. Again though, sex jokes don’t (or shouldn’t have to) make up that much of a standups set, so this isn’t entirely plausible. The final possibility that I came up with is that it’s possible that significantly more men are fans of stand-up, and men prefer other men telling jokes, which means that it’s much more profitable for club managers to book men.