(This story was originally written and recorded for Retrocast 35, released on July 9, 2025.)
In May 1977, Joanne Cantor, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin, published the results of a study exploring how men and women respond to jokes—especially when the punchline comes at the expense of one gender over the other.
Cantor’s research began in 1970 at the University of Pennsylvania, where she tested 34 male and 34 female students. She later repeated the experiment in 1975 at the University of Wisconsin with a larger group: 68 men and 53 women. In both studies, participants were given a series of jokes and asked to rate which ones they found to be the funniest.
What the students didn’t realize was that each joke came in two versions—one where the woman was the butt of the joke, and another where the man was.
“I took jokes that occurred between male and female characters,” Cantor explained, “and had each written into two versions: one in which the male got the last laugh at the expense of the female, and one in which the female got the last laugh.”
Here are examples from the study:
In the first version, the man is the target:
A man at a cocktail party says, “Madam, you are very drunk. You are very, very drunk.”
The woman replies, “Sir, you are stupid. You are very, very stupid. But at least I have the consolation of knowing that tomorrow morning, when I wake up, I’ll be sober.”
And in the alternate version, the joke turns on the woman:
A movie actor, whose autobiography has just been published, is asked by an actress, “I saw your new book. Who wrote it for you?”
He responds, “I’m so glad you enjoyed it. Who read it to you?”
The outcome of both studies was consistent: participants found jokes funnier when the woman was the one being ridiculed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t just the men who showed this preference—women did too. In fact, Cantor noted, “Both males and females found a female victim of a joke to be funnier than a male victim, but in the last study, females held this bias more strongly than males did.”
When asked why jokes at the women’s expense were more popular, Cantor offered two possible explanations.
“Humor for centuries, or forever, has been predominantly a male domain. Humor writers and performers were predominantly male, with men disparaging the female. But we’re not used to seeing women disparaging the man.”
She added, “Also, in our society, it’s inappropriate for women to have a snappy or sarcastic comeback. So we perceive a man with a sarcastic comeback as witty and clever, but a woman who makes the very same comment is perhaps perceived as bitchy or bitter.”
