We spoke to the new generation of female comedians dominating 2017

What is it really like for a woman in comedy these days? With more female stand-ups at the Edinburgh Fringe than ever before, it is about pushing forwards despite a male-heavy industry where you are often still valued for your looks, rather than your brain.

Are women funny? That’s the tediously perennial question – still hotly debated online – but one that surely has been answered more than enough times to leave little room for doubt. For the millennial generation, there have been a number of awe-inspiring waves of female-led UK comedy with the likes of Victoria Wood, French and Saunders, Jo Brand, Smack the Pony, Katherine Tate, Black Books’ Tamsin Greig paving the way for the women on stages and TV screens today: Sarah Millican, Katherine Ryan, Bridget Christie, and Miranda Hart to name but a few.

The rite of passage that is Edinburgh Fringe is seeing more women flocking to the Scottish capital to showcase their wares than ever before, and more female-written and -performed shows, such as Michaela Cole’s Chewing Gum and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, are snapping up awards and admiration for their edge and innovation.

Yet Funny Women’s Lynne Parker and Hazel O’Keefe, who organises Women In Comedy Festival, despair that promoters still struggle to find a single woman to put on their comedy night bills (or anyone other than checked-shirted, skinny-jeaned straight white blokes, for that matter) despite hundreds of female comedians passing through their doors each year. An alarming proportion still report being greeted, post-gig, with the charming, backhanded: “I don’t normally find women funny, but...”. And while a cushioned single spot is commonly reserved for a woman on our ever-popular banterous panel shows, we are still some way off seeing an all-female version (according to research by Stuart Lowe, it’s happened once since 1967).

So what’s it really like for a woman in comedy these days? I spoke to some comedians set to make the country laugh in 2017 (which, let’s face it, will be needed more than ever) to find out.

Full story : female comedians