Stand up comedians

Being a stand-up comedian is an inherently daunting task: You risk failure and mockery in a very public way, night after night after night. For women who have broken into this historically male-dominated industry, the challenges are often even more layered. Not only do they have to tackle the nerve-wracking mission of making an audience laugh, but they also have to contend with the inherent gender bias of the comedy world.

In April 2021, Hulu released the documentary Hysterical, which cracked open the messy, wonderful, complicated reality of being a woman in comedy, and how it has changed and continues to change through the years. “Comedians are by nature trying to reach the sun — as close to the sun as possible without getting burned, but the sun is lower for women then it is for men, so when they reach to push the outer boundaries, those boundaries are more limited still,” Hysterical director and executive producer Andrea Nevins said in an interview with SPIN.

But on the upside, Nevins noted, there is a sisterhood among female comedians that has sprung from their shared frustrations. The documentary highlights a litany of women who are paving the way for future generations — including Margaret Cho, Rachel Feinstein, Amy Schumer, Sherri Shepherd, Bette Midler, and Ali Wong.