MPs hear evidence of sexism in the indusrty

Too many aspiring female comedians are dropping out of comedy when they are still open spots because of the constant drip of sexist and problematic behaviour, MPs have heard.

The women and equalities committee was told how the lack of protection and support offered to new acts playing smaller gigs deters women from pursuing a career in comedy.

Aimee Perry, head booker of Manchester’s Frog And Bucket comedy venue, said: ’I’ve noticed, especially in the open mic circuit,  that a lot of [comedians] still have concerns about individual nights, and I think that’s where the trouble is happening,’ she said: ‘It’s so vulnerable to even just get up on stage, then to be in a room full of men is quite intimidating – and that’s why a lot of them drop out because little things can happen.  

‘I’ve heard female comedians talk to me about a male offering to drive them home [rather than] catch a train but then the conversation in the car gets awkward.

‘It’s little things like that that are happening that might not seem [significant] on the grand scheme, but these little things make women go, "I don’t wanna do stand up anymore ’cause this man has made me feel uncomfortable." A lot of that stuff is still happening in the grassroots.’

Similarly, Kelly Edwards-Good, marketing officer with Komedia Brighton, explained her club had transparent procedures designed to make any women working there feel safe – which is not true of small nights.

‘I think that’s the difference between us as a medium-sized venue regulations and rules, perhaps they feel safer and that protects them. But when we talk about open mics and grassroots situations, that’s obviously very open to abuse.’

And while she praised the work of Get Off Live Comedy – which offers an HR service to the comedy industry – she said the problematic bookers would simply not sign up.

‘If you’ve got a promoter in a tiny club who’s not willing to do the work on diversity and isn’t going to be listening to women, they’re not going to pay ten pounds to be part of that organisation.’ (Membership actually starts at £12 a year for the smallest promoters)

The committee discussed the 2018 Chortle survey which found that one in four Women in Comedy had been sexually assaulted by a colleague – but that many did not report issues because they were worried about repercussions and loss of work.

‘These smaller clubs might have a policy but if the person running the night is the problem then who do they go to?’ Perry said, adding those who ran room-above-a-pub comedy nights ‘sometimes forget that the artists are part of their staff’ to whom they have responsibilities.

When asked if there were any comedians that she avoided booking because of concerns about their behaviour, Perry shot back with an immediate: ‘Yes.’

Elsewhere in the session, she said:  ‘I know lots of women have talked to me in the past about certain incidents that have happened, and most of the time we will not work with that performer again.

‘We make it super clear to staff and people coming in how they can report to multiple people. We want it to be as easy as possible for them to report it no matter how small it is’.

On the wider question of gender imbalance in comedy, Perry told the MPs there were plenty of good female comedians she could book, but added: ‘It’s not necessarily the pro circuit that’s struggling for women, it’s the open mic circuit and that’s where they drop off, that’s where they turn away because these individual shows in a pub, they don’t have the protection.

And while there are enough good female comedians to ensure a balanced line-up,  she said it took work to find them, which a smaller promoter may not have ‘the capacity or the drive’ to do.

‘I think you have to have it consciously in your mind every day that you are booking women in the line-up, as well as [other] diversity, and it’s something that we continuously do,’ she said.  ‘You have to continuously fight. It’s a hard job. It’s very tiring, and I think a lot of people give up quite easily.

Both women said that audiences were changing, too, and were more welcoming to female comics on the bill.

Edwards-Good noted how things were changing, saying: ‘We haven’t always had balanced lineups. We’ve been around for 32 years… and we’ve worked with collaborators in the past that didn’t share our ideas on balance and diversity, so we made changes about who we work with. We work with a promoter at the moment called Little Wander and it’s a really collaborative approach.

‘We will try to avoid all-male, all-white lineups. It’s not a written rule but it’s something that we work towards. We’re not ever going "well we’ve got three guys let’s just find an inexperienced [female] stand-up". We can’t do that –  that wouldn’t be good for a comedy club audience as  we are just putting on the people we believe are strong enough to perform.

She added that ‘we haven’t noticed an impact on ticket sales at all’ when it came to promoting line-ups dominated by, or exclusively comprising, women. 

‘It’s important to say that when we have promoted International Women’s Day line-ups in the past, we’ve had quite a lot of online backlash,’ she said. ‘But this hasn’t translated into ticket sales, which is heartening, specifically on Twitter/X [where you get] just horrible, sexist comments about women, [homophobic comments] when we do stuff for Pride and racist comments on Black History Month.

’So it seems like that’s quite a separate microcosm to the actual people that are coming to see shows.

She said Komedia stopped advertising on X because ‘we are absolutely not giving them money’.

Perry agreed that audiences trusted her club to put on a good line-up, without knowing the acts, adding: ‘We’re quite fortunate in that way that we can be able to make sure that our line-ups are as diverse as possible.’

She said the younger audiences the club now attracts were especially open to more diverse line-up but there were sometimes issues with stag dos ‘puffing their chest’.

‘Audiences are more aware of what white men are saying and aren’t putting up with it any more,’ she said. ‘The majority of that kind of style of comedy is going out of fashion and more people want to see women on stage and the audiences are catching up with what we have been trying to do.’

Edwards-Good added that  it was important Komedia had diversity on line-ups, saying: ‘Somebody who comes to our comedy club and sees a black woman as part of that line-up talking about her experiences, they might not be someone who’s been exposed to those experiences. They might not be someone who would go, "I would go to her solo show", but they are being exposed to that in this way that comedy has a special gift for of being accessible to people, and so it’s really important to have those voices on the line-up’.

She also spoke of the financial difficulties affecting her club, with audiences heading out less – and now more often in couples than big groups – and effectively needing bar income to survive. ‘We’ve struggled to stay afloat and stay open, and that’s the truth of it,’ she said.

Also on the financial front, Perry spoke about the difficulty in getting funding for the Women in Comedy festival run by the Frog and Bucket, saying: ‘It’s really tough because people love the idea of supporting women, but they don’t actually follow through…’

She also called for more funding in the arts in general, saying: ‘The more the government takes funding away from art, then how are more people from [diverse] backgrounds going to see people who represent them? 

‘Lots of parents would rather their children become doctors or nurses to have security because arts doesn’t provide that security. [People] let go of those dreams because they think, "Oh, it’s not safe because there’s not enough money or representation." So it starts from the top and dribbles down. We can’t make change at the bottom if no one at the top is helping us make change.’

Both women also spoke about a gender pay gap, Edwards-Good said that although 42 per cent of the acts Komedia books are women, only 28 per cent are in the best-paying headliner slot – but it was a significant improvement on last year, when just 16 per cent of women were headliners.

They also noted that female comics were more likely to be comperes, which pays the same as the headline slot in both clubs but is considered tricker because of the demands of keeping the night on track, from a cold start. 

As Labour’s Kevin McKenna wryly commented: ‘You’re saying that women are in the job that’s got the higher emotional demand and the lower social value and status. I can’t think of any parallels there at all…’

Edwards-Good and Perry’s session was the first of two today looking at women in comedy, and follows another hearing earlier this month when comedians  Ola Labib and Nina Gilligan – who is also co-founder of Get Off Live Comedy – and journalist Rachael Healy told how sexism, opaque pay practices and harassment was rife in the industry. Read our report of that session here.

The committee will be launching a call for evidence from any women working in comedy who would like to contribute on Friday. 

Published: 28 Apr 2026