But seriously, it’s hard for women

MARIA Bamford, a stand-up comedian for the last 14 years, knows the rules of the laughter business. And one of the rules of comedy-club booking goes like this:

Only one female comic can play on the bill each night. Few clubs will ever exceed that quota.

“It’s just a prejudicial hiring practice,� Bamford, 36, says of the unspoken practice. The only exceptions, she says, are special “theme� nights, when women or nonwhite comics are featured as “The Ladies of Laughter,� “Urban Night� (for African Americans) or “ChopShtick� (as one Los Angeles club promoted its all-Asian American bill).

The one-woman rule may help explain a striking fact about the state of stand-up comedy these days. Although there’s never been a great time to be a female comedian, fewer women are breaking through to stand-up’s top ranks.

Most every comic deals with aspects of the job such as constant travel, working nights in boozy joints, nonexistent job security, wildly variable pay and isolation from friends and family. But for female comics, there’s also the facet of being in a culture -- and a business -- that’s uneasy with the idea of a woman generating laughter.

Bamford, a California-based comedian, says that after any performance, a female comic “will have at least five guys coming up to [her] and saying there aren’t many funny women, that [she is] the funniest woman they’ve seen.

“It’s sort of a compliment, but� -- she pauses and sighs -- “OK.�

Such encounters might help explain why there are far fewer women than men on the comedy trail -- and why, relative to their male counterparts, few women have ever become nationally known as stand-up comics.

Excepting comic actresses, which is a very different thing, the list of famous female stand-ups is a short one.

Almost all the best-known from the last couple of generations can be listed in short order: Joan Rivers, Totie Fields, Phyllis Diller, Minnie Pearl, Elaine May and Moms Mabley in the Ed Sullivan era. Lily Tomlin was a comic queen of the 1970s. Then came Whoopi Goldberg, Elayne Boosler, Sandra Bernhard, Roseanne Barr, Rita Rudner, Brett Butler, Paula Poundstone, Ellen DeGeneres. Then there’s Caroline Rhea, Joy Behar, Margaret Cho, Rosie O’Donnell. Also emerging largely in the ‘90s: Janeane Garofalo, Wendy Liebman, Kathy Griffin and Wanda Sykes, as well as Sarah Silverman (whose Comedy Central show is a new hit). Add a few up-and-comers, such as Lisa Lampanelli, and you’ve about covered the field.

Just 25 names. In 40 or so years. The equivalent list of male comics would run almost as long as Bob Hope’s or George Burns’ careers.

A few years ago, Comedy Central surveyed a panel of comedians to draw up a list of the 100 “greatest� stand-up comics of “all time.� Despite the admittedly subjective nature of the exercise, a limited time frame (the list was heavily weighted with names of the last 20 years) and absurd omissions (Tomlin, Steve Allen, Danny Kaye, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis), the results seemed to certify a chromosomal dominance in comedy:

Ninety men made the list, compared with just 10 women.

‘Funny isn’t sexy’

AREN’T women just as funny as men?

Well, apparently it’s not that simple.

“My gut tells me that society doesn’t like to see a woman in power, and standing on a stage [telling jokes] is a powerful position,� says Eddie Brill, a veteran stand-up comic who scouts and books comedians for David Letterman’s show. “Some of the best comedians on the planet are female. But a lot of men are afraid to laugh at a woman. It sometimes can turn insecure men into even more insecure people.�

Joan Rivers has a theory. “Most girls, when they’re young, realize that they don’t get attention for being funny,� says Rivers, 73, whose stand-up career goes back to the borscht belt. Girls “want to be pretty or sexy. Funny isn’t sexy. Comedy isn’t sexy.�

Stand-up comedy is “a very masculine form. You’re taking an audience and dominating them. You’re like a ringmaster in a lion’s den. You have to be very strong,� she says.

The pay is attractive only for headliners with TV credits. A top comic might earn $2,500 for a Tuesday-Sunday run; opening acts typically earn just a few hundred dollars per week. Traveling comics usually stay in “comedy condos,� the shabby apartments provided by club owners.

It’s difficult under such circumstances to maintain a marriage; raising children is more complicated still. Ask Lisa Lampanelli how many times she’s performed her act during the last 16 years and she starts to calculate. “Sometimes I did six shows a night, sometimes three or two,� she says. “Figure an average of two shows per night for the last 16 years. How many is that?�

Well, a lot.

“There’s no substitute for stage time,� she continues. “But I need rest. I need to stay home. I need to get my mind off this ... grind, you know?�

Lampanelli starts to sob. At first you think she might be joking. She’s anything but.

“It sucks for us, you know?� she says through her tears. “If you’re a woman [comic], you don’t have the option to have a nice wife who stays home and has the kids for you. There’s just this mind-numbing schedule, and you can’t believe there’s nothing else out there in life.

“I’m jealous of the male comics who have kids. Who have wives. Who have a life. I cried on Valentine’s Day because I had nothing going on.�

Tough crowd

THE odds against making it in comedy might be rising -- and rising faster for women.

Television, once the surest way for a comic to gain national exposure, isn’t such a sure thing anymore. Although there are plenty of TV showcases for stand-ups these days, the proliferation of them has diluted the impact of any particular performer, says Phyllis Diller, the pioneering comic who turned her life as a wife and mother into a 47-year-and-counting stand-up career.

Back in a three-channel universe, “it was much easier to become known,� says Diller, 89. “The exposure you got [on TV] was real exposure. Today, with 500 channels, who sees you often enough to remember your name? It’s hard now, much harder.

“It used to be one shot on ‘The Tonight Show’ and you had it made. Or thought you did.�

A decade or so ago, a woman who succeeded in the clubs might land her own sitcom. This vaulted the careers of a number of women, such as Cho, Butler, Barr, DeGeneres, Griffin, Garofalo and Thea Vidale.

Talk shows were another vehicle. O’Donnell and Rhea had their own. Behar, a longtime club comic, is far better known for her quips on “The View.� But the broadcast networks have moved away from sitcoms, and the few that remain feature men (such as “King of Queens,� “Two and a Half Men,� “George Lopez,� “Scrubs,� “Rules of Engagement�) or have ensemble casts of men and women (“The Office,� “My Name Is Earl,� “30 Rock,� “How I Met Your Mother�).

Other than Behar, O’Donnell and DeGeneres, female comics have all but disappeared from daytime television. And outside of Rivers’ run as a guest host on “The Tonight Show� and as the headliner of her own Fox talk show, no woman comic has ever really cracked the late-night talk-TV arena. That features the likes of Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Carson Daly and Bill Maher.

Comedy Central, perhaps the most reliable outlet for stand-up talent on TV, isn’t much better for women, primarily because its target audience is young men who generally prefer an edgy, sometimes crude style. Its breakout stars have been such men as Dave Chappelle, Stewart, Colbert, Lewis Black, Steve Carell, Dave Attell, Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook.

“In all of the programming we do, we’re always looking for something original and innovative,� says Lauren Corrao, who heads original programming and development for Comedy Central. “But at the same time, it has to be provocative and edgy. That doesn’t preclude a woman. It’s just more of a male style.�

Yep, crude and earthy -- in traditional comedy terms, more like a man than many men.

That’s been Lampanelli’s ticket too. She is often billed as a female Don Rickles who ridicules just about every ethnic and racial group in her act and can be particularly savage toward women. Her “tough-broad� persona is starting to pick up a wide following. Lampanelli’s stand-up special in January was the third highest-rated in Comedy Central’s history.

Lampanelli faults other women for staying with safe and predictable subject matter: shopping, PMS and “their Coach bag collection.�

“I push the envelope all the time,� Lampanelli says. “Most guys can’t get away with what I do. I get away with it because people like me. I’m lovable. I’m not angry. Well, we should push it. We’re not senators. We’re comics.

“Men respond to my kind of comedy,� she says, adding, in true Lampanelli fashion, “If a guy wants to hear a yapping bitch, he’ll just stay home with his wife.�

Appealing to the male sense of humor is practically an economic strategy. “Women aren’t buying the tickets,� Lampanelli says. “It’s the men, really the men who are 18 to 39, who are spending the money at the clubs.�