With International Women’s Day fast approaching this weekend we are excited that the results of our collaboration with the University of East London is coming to fruition.
It doesn’t feel like a year ago that we were celebrating with the charity Womankind Worldwide with a very special panel event where we discussed 'The place of women in society and how humour defines us', followed by a comedy line-up representing women from all around the world. The resulting podcast is still on line HERE.
We wanted to explore these themes in more depth this year and had the amazing privilege to work with the University of East London’s Centre of Excellence for Women Entrepreneurship as part of the Make It Global campaign last November when we launched the Funny Women Players as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.
We then went on to collaborate with the university on a review of existing research undertaken over the last 50 years based on themes of ‘Women, Humour and Power in the Workplace’. You can read the full report which was completed by Rachel Densham, a masters student at the School of Psychology, UEL under the supervision of Dr Sharon Cahill, HERE.
It is hard to put an intellectual value on humour – but we think this review provides great insight into how humour transcends the gender divide (or not) and why since the 1990s various companies have been hiring ‘humour specialists’ to improve their business.
Gathering evidence from 50 academic papers and over 3,000 media articles spanning 40 years the review examined how we regard humour generally: “If used positively and judiciously, humour can help to sustain healthy social systems in the workplace by improving communication, reducing stress, enhancing leadership and promoting organisational culture.” And how the divide between male and female humour is also put under scrutiny: “humour is an intrinsically powerful act and joke-telling is an exceptionally aggressive form of humour which may go some way to explain why men tell more jokes than women in conversation. (Baxter 2011)”
The interplay between leadership and humour was examined in the review with special attention paid to how women can employ humour to boost their career and reputation.
The review found that dividing humour into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ helped identify how it was used in the workplace. Positive humour is “affiliative and self-enhancing” whereas negative humour is “self-defeating and aggressive” and used as a coping mechanism in stressful situations to inspire a positive outlook.
Yet we still have certain reservations when it comes to professional women and their use of humour to boost their career and reputation. Joke-telling remains closely linked to masculinity and status in the workplace.
“Recent research has suggested that female bosses are less likely to make jokes in the boardroom. When they did, more than 80% of their quips were met with silence. By comparison, 90% of jokes made by men were met with a positive response (Baxter, 2011).”
Female humour is more collaborative and less about one-liners so it is yet to find its way into the lexicons of leadership. What is indisputable is that comedy sells and bonds in business.
“Humour maintains boundaries between members of in-groups and out-groups, raises the status of the joke-teller and can be used to influence or control the conversational partner(s). Kothoff (2006)”
So, ladies, it is time to get your quips out on the boardroom table! We want to hear your stories so please comment either below, or on our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
For example, have you found humour a help or a hindrance in your workplace? Have you told a joke or funny story that’s bombed?
We want to know! In the meantime you can read the review in full HERE! And read our founder Lynne Parker's thoughts on her Huffington Post blog HERE!
