Eyeing up a luminous brochure for the upcoming Fringe we are once again faced with the infinite dilemma of who gets louder laughs, men or women? A question that has divided audiences across the world and exhausted us with its very existence, we wait tentatively for the 2011 election for the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy (Perrier) Awards. With only two female winners to date, the hilarious Jenny Éclair and laugh-out-loud-able Laura Solon, the prize (the very epitome of ‘funny’) may seem further away for some.

Many have labelled men funnier than women.  But such a comment is as ignorant and crude as deeming all women with blonde hair stupid and all boys who watch Star Trek, virgins.  It fails to acknowledge the idiosyncrasies of the individual and is as good as pigeonholing female comedy to the capacity of ‘bras, chocolate, periods and Weight Watchers’.  But it fails to go unnoticed that pitched against men in stand-up or improv, women are beaten to the punch line, as Germaine Greer recently considered for the Guardian.

Many scientists have put this down to our genetic make-up and the nature versus nurture instinct that inhabits us all, fully representative of gender.  It is said that society bears a different expectation on men and women coupled with a natural urge to find a mate, such that men are the ones who seek laughs and women are the laughers – together we command a certain ‘ying-yang’ if you like, stabling a balanced laugher-laughee ratio, and all is well and good.

It would suggest that women who themselves attempt laughs break this balance, as Joan Rivers noted when she said, “men find funny women threatening”.  It may be thought that women accepted as ‘funny’ by men falls upon a secondary acceptance to an initial, more primal impulse of physical appearance.  Take for example, Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey (and even Lucille Ball) who all command some level of beauty, or at least, sexy, on stage.  Any laughs they command are done so once the audience has time to see and accept them first.  I say this myself however, with split ribs and a smile on my face from watching their performances in awe.

This said balance demands a greater gravity when we consider women and men separately in their own societal environments away from the stage.  Within a group, men are perpetually seen as unwilling to talk to one another about ‘things that matter’, unlike women whose conversation, stereotypically, is seen to be primarily made up of just that.

As on the comedy panel show ‘Mock the Week’ men who, genetically, are said to perform better under the intense pressures accompanying of improv, continuously leave women dumbfounded and speechless, often using somewhat aggressive banter to seize the punch line. Women, ousted not by their desire to be seen as funny, but by their lacking need for acceptance at a similar level – in scientific terms, they have the pick of the crop when it comes to finding a mate as natural carriers of children – their brains are “not sharpened to this need,” unlike men.

With some highly anticipated new Fringe acts from the likes of Shappi Khorsandi to Sarah Millican, Roisin Conaty to Hannah Godsby, and last year’s Perrier nominee Josie Long I wait with expectation that, this year, we will show the boys how it’s done and reduce any quips of “she’s not funny” to belly ache and laughter lines.  Leaving 5 star reviews for those who insist that “comedy is still a deeply sexist, male-orientated industry”.  For now, I suppose, we will just have to wait and see, enjoying the anticipation from audience seats.

Article written by Hannah Van Den Berg