Women who
rise up the ranks and enhance their reputations and performance in the
workplace often do this with the deployment of humour, However there is a
gendered twist to it which we need to understand. Research recently undertaken
by the University of East London 'Women, Humour and Power in the Workplace'
shows women use humour positively in the workplace to improve their
professional relationships. But it isn't just their professional relationships
which benefit.
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Funny Women launched 12 years ago now
hosts stand up awards, festivals, and most
recentlyhas commissioned research on the
gender dividein use of humour in the workplace |
Funny Women,
the UK’s leading community for female comedy set up over 12 years ago by Lynne
Parker and now starting to reap dividends, and the UEL’s Centre of Excellence
for Women's Entrepreneurship (CEWE), have teamed up to undertake this
research.
40 years of
academic and media comment were scoured as Dr Sharon Cahill, from UEL’s School
of Psychology led her team in a process to explore 'how positive humour in the
workplace can result in women improving effectiveness in the workplace and
helps their confidence and performance – making work more productive and
enjoyable for everyone'.
Role Models for women
“There are a
huge amount of very successful women comedians: Ruby Wax, Jo Brand, Maureen
Lipman, French and Saunders, Meera Syal, Sandy Toksvig – to name just a few.
Women have always enjoyed a sense of humour, being able to tell a joke and have
a laugh”.
There are a number of ways in which humour is deployed, which seem to be
managed differently by men and women in the workspace. The reason for the
different manner in which humour is deployed, can be related to the assymetric
gendered relations within business and public work spaces. Nothing is hard and fast in this arena of
making jokes, self enhancing anecdotal tales, affiliative humour, and self
deprecating remarks.
What is clear
however is that affiliative humour and self-deprecating humour are being successfully
deployed by those who are taking forward transformational leadership styles in
their organisations - males and females alike can develop these forms of humour
to great effect. The era of the dominion of transactional humour which has
tended to privilege self enhancing and aggressive humour - with a substantial
negative impact in the ability of diverse teams
to bond and develop positive and egalitarian working relationships - and many
women literally voiceless.
Three functions of group humour have been categorised
by Jen Hay in a piece of research called Functions of Humour in Conversations
of Men and Women (2000). These functions were solidarity-based, psychological
and power-based.
Different types and styles of humour
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| Martin, R., Puhlik-Doris, P. Larsen, G., Gray, J. & Wier, K. (2003). |
| Journal of Research in Personality, 37, |
Confidence
matters
Hay argues that humour is an
intrinsically powerful act and that the male preference for joke-telling is an
exceptionally aggressive form of humour. This might help
explain why men tend to tell more jokes than women, and the (marginal but
significant) preference in turn by women for male joke telling noted in
research undertaken in the University of California.(Who’s Funny: Gender
Stereotypes, Humor Production, and Memory Bias: Christenfeld
2011).
Furthermore there may be evidence as to why
in male dominated boardrooms female directors are less likely to make jokes
there. When women attempt this, more than 80% of their quips were met with
silence according to the UEL's research on the literature. What goes wrong?
It could be that the inversion of the expected behaviours of men and
women is so extreme that the 'set up' of the joke is undermined. It could be
the lack of confidence of the 'performing' woman. Or it could be that the woman
is simply not 'in her own humorous flow'. So what might women’s more
natural arena of humour be?
Playfulness and Success
Humour and having fun in your work is understood
across an increasingly wide platform of work-place psychologists, as a mighty powerful engine for developing
strong businesses. In '301 Ways to Have
Fun at Work', co-author Leslie Yerkes argues integrating a sense of
playfulness, humour and general fun in the work place results in 'lower levels of absenteeism, greater job satisfaction, increased
productivity and less downtime'. Fun it would appear, is the single most
important trait of a highly effective and successful organisation.
So as women are increasingly involved in establishing
new enterprises and moving into positions of power within organisations - how
can they ensure that the sense of fun and playfulness is not lost in the grind
of climbing and staying up the greasy pole of economic and business prowess?
Did the spare rib lack a funny bone?
Psychology has been wondering what is to be done about
women's sense of humour and their ability to deliver a 'male' framed punchline
for over the last thirty years. Lakoff
in the mid 1970s, as women moved into the lecture theatres, the professions and
male dominated public spaces in increasing numbers, delivered the following excoriating
social put down!
“It is axiomatic in [middle-class American]
society that, first, women can’t tell jokes – they are bound to ruin the punch
line, they mix up the order of things, and so on. Moreover, they don’t ‘get’
jokes. In short, women have no sense of humour.” (Lakoff, 1975, p56)
So is it that women just don't 'get' how to deliver a
powerful punch line, or a lack
confidence in delivery, or a failure in memory? Is it a matter of biology,
bottle or competency? Or is it something about the complexity of how humour
works in asymmetrically gendered public space?
In the battle of the sexes should women be leaning into another form of
humour?
Humour in work place harrassment
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Where Humiliation is Normal —
Being LGBT in the Chinese Workplace |
Where differences in power and authority are an
intrinsic part of interaction between colleagues, humour can be deployed in
positive and negative ways.
Unfortunately as those of us who work in developing work place systems,
processes and cultures to impede discrimination and foster inclusion - humour
is an exceptionally powerful device for undermining others in an ostensibly
acceptable manner. Negative and critical
messages can be maintained through finessing objections or alternative ideas into a barely
disguised insult presented in 'a form which frames the objector negatively, as
lacking a sense of humour” (Holmes & Marra, 2002).
Significant research
suggests that men’s humour (in western framed businesses) is more in keeping
with this more subversive approach. Male
humour according to the UEL report,
tends to be more competitive, more aggressive, and status-orientated
with an aroma of performance and display (Marlowe, 1989; Jenkins, 1985). And by
this tale, many an incipient harrassment or bullying case has been rejected by
senior managers - because of the recourse to the argumen tby the office 'wit'
or prankster that the 'offended against' colleague 'lacked a sense of humour'.
Display and Performance
Male prowess to 'perform' on demand and be successful
in joke delivery is now perceived through controlled research to be “just at
the edge of detectability” superior to women according to Californian research,
based on witty responses to cartoons (Christenfeld cited in Kiderra, 2011) However what is still clearly differentiated
is the self confidence of homo-economicus, heterogamous, in thinking himself
and his jokes funny, entertaining and super- effective. Men's sense of competency in this area far
outstripped that of the participating women - even if the outcome (the
recognition by others of successful humour) was only marginally differentiated
(Christenfeld 2011).
Its what you do AND the way that you do it
Decker and
Rotondo (2001) found that the way humour is exercised by female managers,
whether it is used positively or
negatively is extraordinarily significant.
If women use negative humour they can be easily perceived as being
bitchy and underhand. However if a woman
uses positive humour she achieves a far greater incremental pay back than her
male counterpart would do.
Women even
though it seems, they are only starting to get a handle on discursive, collaborative and
positive humour in the workplace; seem nevertheless to outstrip the men in positive impact
when deploying humour in their organisational environment. Rotondo's study serves as a significant
encouragement for women to stand up and explore further the powerful resource
bank of their funny bones, intelligence and heart.
Women who know how to be amusing and humorous, bring a
professionally smart gift to influence colleagues and enhance co-operation and
performance across their organisations. It is also a smart move to see cultivated. Organisationally, it is becoming clearer that part of the skill set to bring forward is the gift of collaborative humour, where everyone is in on the joke, because the humour being engendered is playful, focussed, inclusive, democratic, humble and fun.
Deprecatory humour
 |
I was not a particularly small child. I was the one who always
got picked to play Bethlehem in the school nativity
-Jo Brand |
Jo Brand has developed a knack of self
deprecating humour which furnishes her with the social acceptance required to
then unleash a torrent of excoriatingly amusing personal comments and social
commentary across her routine.
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| Ruby Wax - ego shattering observations |
Comedy and satire are based whether we like
it or not on a form of aggressiveness and a certain degree of unpleasantness.
It is by nature a tad acerbic, As Martin's four way chart allows us to step
back and reflect, this sting in the tail can be deployed either positively or
negatively. Lucille Ball - one of the break through comedians of the 1950s
chose to use it in self-enhancing humour alongside huge swathes of
physical humour.
Ruby Wax the 1980s 'queen of putdowns' made
her explosive entrance into UK and US Terrestrial channels with a mixture
of ' acerbic asides and ego-shattering observations' (Time Out 2011).
Neither did she spare the sisterhood from her comic demolition famously
double whammying health conscious females, with her devastating post-Freudian
aside on Pilates culture.
'Everyone is bluffing. It's about those women who do Pilates five times a week so they can strengthen their pelvic floor and be able to lift a carpet.' Ruby Wax
The next frontier - inclusive humour.
By and large, it appears that women tend to prefer
telling jokes at their own expense and men tend to prefer telling jokes at
other people's expense." (Kotthoff, 2009).
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“ If my partner says let's run upstairs and make love,
it would have to be one or the other”” - Sandi Toksvig |
This tells us something of a
wider social narrative of how power is currently distributed across the gender
divide.
Research has yet to get powerfully under way on how gay
men and lesbian women have brokered this distribution of self deprecation,
pride and bitch attack - but Graham Norton, Stephen Fry, Sandi Toksvig and Sue
Perkins are some notable trail blazers in 'out' comedians seeking to make their
social and life commentary count - and disrupting heteronormativity and
the stereotypes which have accompanied it for generations.
.
Be Inspired
“We want to
inspire women to enjoy using humour in a positive way," said Sarah Cahill
at the launch of the Funny Women Conference in March 2014. It's a wonderful
opportunity to step into personal power and help create a joyous, positive
space around us and those we work alongside. So what stops us experimenting?
Humour lightens our personal load, and the loads of others working alongside,
inspires hopes, connects us to others, and keeps us grounded, focused, and alert.
The personal
and the social impacts of positive, collaborative humour have been clarified by
recent research, and deep down we understand its truth. Why else are we in the generation of the
super comedians, and the sell out tours of MacIntyre, Connelly, Miranda, and
Sara Millican. These comedians re frame the everyday foibles of our existence
in such a way that we are reduced to laughter and tears. Endorphins overwhelm
our anxiety. We bond with others similarly seduced. We recognise each other and
the nature of our common quest for understanding, acceptance and meaning.
Perhaps we should leave the last word to the
iconic comedian who mowed down opposition and created the platform on which so
many of our contemporary female comedians stand. ' I'm not funny' she said, 'What I am is brave' and with that
she took a hay baler to the words of the common prayer book and produced an
attitude changer for all women who might be tempted to sit to one side on this
one, and let others proceed.
Further resources see www.funnywomen.com/
http://www.uel.ac.uk/wwwmedia/uelwebsite/contentassets/documents/staff/Women-Humour-and-Power-in-the-Workplace-updated.pdf
Looking for workshops in assertiveness, confidence and building collaborative humour in the work place? - be in touch with
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