.jpg)
Michele A'Court's been hounded about what it's like to be a funny woman once too often. She turns down an interview, pointing to her final thoughts on the subject in The Guardian, where she wrote earlier this year: "It forces me to think of myself as 'a woman who does comedy' rather than as a 'comedian'."
Despite the question haunting her decade-long career of wisecracking, it's 2014, and 24-year-old Louise Beuvink still gets introduced as "the one with tits and a vagina".Rose Matafeo, 22, is horrified that at her gig last week in Hamilton, a man congratulated all the male comedians by their names, then merely said to her: "Well done Mrs Skirt" ("I wasn't even wearing a skirt!").
Urzila Carlson has the same response for the age-old "is it hard being a female comedian?": "I don't know I've never been a male one. Is it hard being a f---wit?"
So why does our comedy scene feature more penises than the graffiti on K Road power boxes?
Too long has been spent on the joyless moot of whether women are funny or not (of course they are). Figuring out where the idea originates is depressing, but perhaps Virginia Woolf said it best in 1929: society has different expectations of women.
Stereotypes about delicate creatures with natural ineptitude in maths, science, sports and - apparently - comedy (ladies, please flutter your eyelashes in the direction of Mr Jerry "I can't see women doing that. It bothers me" Lewis) remain prevalent in the 21st Century.
These preconceptions, says Matafeo, a Billy T Award winner and regular on TV3's Jono and Ben at Ten, explain why you see so few women in stand-up.
"The biggest struggle is wrestling with what people already think," she says. "There are good female comedians, bad ones and material on everything, but we're tainted with the same brush by audiences and I hope that will change."
It can be a daunting environment, says Matafeo: "It's a male-dominated industry and starting out as a minority in anything isn't a comfortable position."
Women have other stuff to do, suggests Carlson. "You work at night mainly and it's a tough industry - everyone's a critic. People have no qualms, the same as if you watch a movie: you walk out and go 'that was shit' but don't think about the years that go into it.
"Men, I think, can take more. They don't care or want to prove them wrong."
Beuvink, a stand-up comedian who took a year off gigging to focus on her "real" job in advertising, was inspired to return to comedy after seeing Matafeo and Carlson "smashing it" at the Comedy Festival - Matafeo won the Billy T and Carlson took the People's Choice award.
Since then, Beuvink has quit her full-time job to focus on comedy while maintaining a part-time income (you've got to be able to pay the rent). After a gig she was approached by Ben Hurley to open for him and he helped her land a job writing for the TV3 comedy panel show Seven Days.
"A bunch of women write for Seven Days and there are probably people who laugh at their jokes and would otherwise think women aren't funny," she says. "They're completely none the wiser. It makes me smile: you're laughing at women and don't even know it."
While it's rare for Beuvink to be introduced by her genitals, she's usually presented to audiences as "the female comedian."
"They'd never go here's a black comedian, a Jewish comedian, a gay comedian. It throws me a bit. I know the audiences expectations are lowered. I've been introduced as different, special, unique. I want to define myself by what I say on stage, not what MC decided before I walked on."
Laura Daniel, 23, a regular on the Auckland stand-up scene who also writes for TVNZ's Happy Hour, says the best advice she got was to embrace her womanhood and never feel obligated to play to stereotypes.
"If you're funny, just be what makes you funny - not what you think punters want to hear. I make fun of myself and the stupid things I do but not for being a woman. It's important for any young female comedian to not degrade themselves because they are female."
While stereotypes remain - the fat, funny lesbian; the dazed and confused love-struck damsel - it's more about taking who you are and using that as material. It's not something that's necessarily gender-specific; Dai Henwood has a running gag about his height, Guy Williams embraces his awkwardness.
When Matafeo began stand-up at the age of 15, her braces, frizzy hair and natural goofiness gave her instant material. "Because I was genuinely nervous I played upon that to derive comedy. people would see me on stage being nervous and find it funny. In recent years I've been like 'oh, I've actually been in comedy for a while, I should stop pretending it's my first gig every time."
Scott Blanks, owner of the Classic comedy club says about one in 10 professional comedians are female, and the ratio hasn't changed much in the last decade.
He has his own theory on why that is: "There's nothing preventing either gender starting out in live comedy . . . the difference is that males are drawn to it as a form of exhibitionism. More so than females. And because more men are drawn to it as a thing to do, there are more men still on stage at the business end of it."
Matafeo agrees men are more confident in putting themselves out there. "It's hard to negotiate the actual performance of stand-up because it's a really masculine kind of performance.
"The expectation that people are going to want to hear what they have to say possibly comes easier to men, whereas that's not an expectation [though she stresses it should be one] that is easier for women to have, because it isn't encouraged or facilitated sometimes.
"Men are often imbued with this confidence from just being a man and expecting people to care about what they say. I don't think women are encouraged to do that - this is the kind of barrier being broken."
An added pressure of going on stage as the only female in a set is feeling as if you're carrying a gender on your shoulders, says Beuvink.
"If a male comic sucks people don't go 'oh all men aren't funny', but if we suck that's going to damage the reputation of women in comedy in general because people go 'see, I told you women weren't funny'. It's like confirmation bias. I wouldn't mind if it damaged my reputation but if every woman's reputation is damaged, that's pretty tough."
Carlson says: "Never mind the six dudes you saw that just sucked balls for an hour."
It's the "very worst part" of being a female comedian says Matafeo, who often has people tell her they "don't usually like female comedians because they're vulgar and crass, but you're one of the good ones".
"Honestly it's just so heart-breaking because they're trying to compliment you. There's a complete double standard: a guy can go out and talk about his dick for 10 minutes and if a girl even mentions having a period they're like 'ugh, she's vulgar' ."
Seven Days' rotating panel offers regular television outings to most established Kiwi comedians, making it a decent yardstick for how many women have broken through. The show's producer, Jon Bridges, says he always strives (but doesn't always succeed) in having at least one woman on the six-strong panel: "That's not for the purposes of affirmative action. We're not trying to be PC, we're trying to cater to an audience and make everyone laugh - everyone includes women so we're doing that for our own good."
Last year, the BBC banned all-male panel shows. The move created uproar but was intended as positive discrimination. Bridges wouldn't support a similar rule here; he says his shows aim is solely to be funny, and there just aren't enough female comics to put on the show.
Beuvink isn't keen on quotas either: "The danger with trying to push more women through is you push some when they're not actually ready.
"If you give a comedian a spot that she isn't experienced enough for just for the sake of there being a woman on the line up then maybe she won't do very well and that will damage her career more than benefit it."
But both Beuvink and Bridges say Seven Days is improving. "When we first began we couldn't have two women on the show at once," says Bridges. "Or if we did it meant next week, we couldn't have a woman because she would've been on last week. I can't have the same person on the show because our main thing is we mix it up.
"The world has just started changing slowly and comedy is one of the last places for that change to happen. It's weird because you'd think comedy would be quite a progressive industry."
Or, as Carlson explains: "In another ten years, we're going to look back and go: can you believe there were only six women in early 2000s comedy?"
In this year's Raw Comedy Competition, 11 of the 21 entries were female. Beuvink hopes that's not an anomaly.
Kylie Sealy, who runs the New Zealand Comedy Festival says it won't be. She's seen about a five per cent increase in women scheduled for next year's line-up.
Despite discouraging numbers at The Billy T auditions last month where only two out of 21 applicants were female, she says: "A new wave of comedians are coming through".
There are already at least two names in that hat: Beuvink and Daniel both say they'll be applying next year. Neither felt "ready" to go for the award this year despite (both) being finalists in the Raw Comedy Quest.
"It's up to women, myself included," says Daniel, "to put themselves up for awards like this."
And things are changing, say Matafeo, Daniel and Beuvink. The question that's dogged A'Court's career has changed, even in the space of five years, from "are women funny?" to "now where are the rest of them?"
