When François Rabelais says " laughter is the characteristic of man ", we understand of course that he is talking about humanity... But the question still deserves to be asked : are women and men equal when it comes to laughter ? To find out, let's take a look at the figures and the scientific literature on the subject.
Who is the funniest ?
According to a very serious meta-analysis mixing the results of 28 studies published over the last 40 years, there is a 32% difference between the perceived ability of men to make people laugh and that of women. In other words, men are reputed to be much funnier than women. That's what men say, but so do women.
This lends credence to the thesis of the essayist Christopher Hitchens who in 2007 wrote an article in Vanity Fair with the provocative title: " Why women aren't funny " (note the absence of question marks).
Woman who laughs...
For Hitchens, the reason why women are not funny while men are is to be found in the laws of reproduction. In competition with each other to seduce women, men would need to show that they are beautiful, strong and intelligent, and humor would be precisely one of the most irresistible manifestations of intelligence.
As for women, well, since they would have no other role in this game than to let themselves be seduced and plucked, the cycle of evolution has not led them to exercise the skills of drolitude.
Uh... You have the right to find these explanations quite laughable... And frankly outdated.
Humour in context
More credible are the works that question the place of laughter in socialization. Where we discover, unsurprisingly, that humor is fundamentally cultural and that what makes us laugh here and now is not necessarily what made us laugh yesterday and elsewhere, without us knowing what will make us laugh tomorrow.
In other words, nothing is funny in itself, but humour is always inscribed in a context and a system of references. It is therefore not absurd that in a patriarchal context, humor being perceived as a quality relative to the ability to act on one's environment, it is more readily placed on the side of masculinity. And it's not surprising either that from childhood, little boys are valued and encouraged when they act like clowns, while little girls are expected to be patient, attentive and interested in others rather than in their own self-promotion. Thank you stereotypes !
The power of laughter
But making people laugh is not only about showing wit and audacity, it is a real power ! A resolutely subversive act, says the historian Sabine Melchior-Bonnet in her book Le rire des femmes – Une histoire de pouvoir : laughter is first and foremost a physical movement of the whole body (not exactly in line with the idea of the decorative and discreet woman) but also and above all an emancipatory act.
According to the author, laughter is to take hold of reality in order to take an ironic or even frankly anti-establishment look at it and to replace conventional narratives with a personal imagination. But it is also a question of positioning oneself in one's environment by testifying to one's active presence and by taking with one those who are made to laugh.
When women laugh at each other
It is not surprising, under these conditions, the historian continues, that women who laugh at each other have long been distrusted . So much so that even though from the beginning, The feminist movement is permeated by humor , which it makes one of the sharpest of its combat weapons, it will be made to look severe, surly, killjoy and stuck to the first degree.
It is okay for women to laugh at men's jokes. Moreover, by laughing, they flatter them and it pays off, if we are to believe the results of a
Swiss study indicating that a candidate increases her chances of being hired if she laughs during an interview with a recruiter. On the other hand,
that women laugh without men is immediately less well seen !
Towards a new era of laughter ?
But times seem to be changing. While boy-club sexist humor seems to be much less funny, unless it comes up against a shift in the threshold of social tolerance for profanity, women's humor may be gaining recognition.
The very recent study Think funny, think female: the benefits of Humour for Women's influence in the digital age on Ted Talks and start-up pitches indicates that humour is becoming a major asset for women leaders. Those who dare to be funny win more support and exert more influence than those who only play the serious card. Even better: being funny gives these women an edge over their male competitors.
Women may well be the future of laughter... If not the future of man !
